BOLOGNA.- MAGMA gallery is presenting the show “Renaissance”, with works by Vhils, Betz and Gonzalo Borondo.

For MAGMA gallery, “Renaissance” is an important event because of various reasons: it is the first exhibition after the lockdown, it is the first time that MAGMA gallery meets these three great artists, and this is the first time that Betz and Vhils exhibit their works in Italy.

All the exhibited artworks have been realized specifically for the show; according to their own sensitivity, each artist wanted to focus on and to provide a personal interpretation of the word “Renaissance”, which is about starting a new path, with new energies, while being aware of one’s past.

This is how the splendid artworks by Vhils (Portugal, 1987), protagonist of the global urban art scene, were born. From his works emerges the awareness of his unique style, his own distinctiveness. The great “Accretion series #09”, 206x132 cm, depicts a woman’s face emerging from a collage of advertising posters. The materiality of this technique is also underlined by the torn edges, which highlight the close relationship, almost symbolic, between Vhils and the materials offered by the street. The look of the figure is poetic, light, high up projected onto the future.




Conversely, in “Lethargic series #02”, a big wooden door is manually engraved and represents the potential strength, the unexpressed energy of a body, which is portrayed in profile. Finally, in “Crack series#05”, Vhils corrodes a metal plate with nitric acid, decomposing the portrayed face and making it, in this way, vibrant and iconic at the same time.

Betz (Poland, 1987), in this exhibition, shows three large canvases, the perfect examples of his incredible and enigmatic language, which lies in equilibrium between hyperrealism and surrealism.

In “3 a.m.”, 120x160 cm, the figure painted from behind is a child pointed towards an obscure place, a house in the wood. It is an oneiric territory hosting subtle anxieties, concepts that seems to fall into other dimensions or video-games icons, like pac-man, which show up from the bed’s shadow. In the other two canvases of even bigger formats, “The End”, 160x160 cm, and “Behind the fence”, 150x180, the feminine gaze is the prime element, being it in the foreground and oriented towards the spectator or high up pointed, within a sort of spiritual ascent. The game created by lights and shadows, as well as the competent control over the composition, are enhanced by surreal backgrounds, which almost seem to be scenographic flats of graphic and decorative effect, but still able to strengthen the tension and the energy of the painted scenes.

Gonzalo Borondo (Spain, 1989), finally, surprises the spectator with installation comprising four sculptures, each of them being constituted by a series of plexiglass plates, scratched and painted by the artist.

The lights coming from internal leds makes the various subjects “alive”, which are visually put together and represent the four human temperaments: choleric, phlegmatic, sanguine, and melancholic. The dynamism of these figures seems to be, in this way, tri-dimensional, thanks to the incredible technique of this great artist, brilliant author of poetic installations.