RAFA MACARRÓN
THE GIRLS and THE GIRLS’ DREAMS
January 15 – February 11, 2022
Nino Mier Gallery is pleased to present The Girls and The Girls’ Dreams, a two-part exhibition by Rafa Macarrón, one of the most notable emerging artists in contemporary Spanish painting. The exhibition is the gallery’s first solo show with Macarrón and will be on view in Los Angeles from January 15 – February 11, 2022.
The Girls and The Girls’ Dreams are comprised of mixed media paintings on canvas, works on paper, and one twelve-foot bronze sculpture of an elongated, kneeling dog. The thirty-two works in the exhibition are a testament to Macarrón’s interest in world-building. Almost all of the works in the show feature figural portraits of the titular ‘girls’, isolated from one another and represented in neo-cubist abstraction. Their likenesses appear against black backgrounds that recall either the dead of night or star-filled galaxies. These figures alternatively engage the eyeline of viewers or turn away from them, reflecting a broad range of everyday postures, emotions, and dreams.
With auspices in the works of artists such as Keith Haring, Pablo Picasso, Joan Miró, and Hieronymous Bosch, Macarrón’s paintings cultivate an aesthetic experience structured by a direct relationship between the girls and the viewers. The girls may seem foreign to us, but through them we encounter a kind of purity and innocence that captures our gaze and becomes familiar.
Macarrón understands his smaller drawings and large-scale multimedia paintings on canvas as parallel practices. The drawings are opportunities to zero in on each girl’s face and identity; when reconfigured on canvas, they begin to appear harmonious and fluid, and to have a greater sense of presence. By placing his figures against black backgrounds in chiaroscuro, the intricate geometries that comprise their bodies becomes illuminated. In this way, the girls become the protagonists of Macarrón’s nonlinear narrative. They stand alone with only their thoughts and dreams. The exhibition presents these dreamers as floating bodies in abstraction, and their dreams as what captures and transports us into the sublime abyss that is the tender and frayed memory of early life.
Rafa Macarrón (b. 1982, Spain; lives and works in Madrid) has exhibited at CAC, Málaga, Spain; Museo de Arte Contemporáneo, Alicante, Spain; Museo DA2, Salamanca, Spain; and his work is collected by institutions worldwide, including the Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art, New York; Fundación BMW, Spain; Caja Campo, Valladolid, Spain; and Colección Mercadona, Spain; among others.