Friends and Family Vol IV: Nano4814, Louis Lambert, Mike Swaney & Ana Barriga | Delimbo Sevilla

All together, they transform the white cube of the gallery, creating a space for exchanging styles, resources, influences and manners, but always using figurative painting as a medium which shows their personal vision of their surrounding world. All of them use the pictorial medium in a very intuitive way, either with the intention of investigating the media, like Nano's work; as a playful path, as Barriga's work; or through a naive appearance, in the case of Swaney or Lambert.

Regarding the themes, they explore banal issues, representing people or objects that are part of their immediate context, or that have been found by chance, in order to give them a sense of transcendence, either painted or sculpted.

Proyecto realizado con el apoyo del instituto de la cultura y las artes de Sevilla.

Mike Swaney

Michael Swaney, born 1978 in Kimberley, British Columbia, lives and works in Barcelona.

Swaney's work is based on imagination, as an opposition to photography. He intentionally turns to references such as Jean Dubuffet, Art Brut or Outsider Art, and to infinite search channels such as the Internet.

His pieces are full of characters with a naive and symbolic appearance. Human figures made of essential strokes and colours and cut out on flat backgrounds. Simplified faces that Swaney uses with certain irony, as emoticons of today's society, as a window where to contemplate our world.

Ana Barriga

Born in Jerez de la Fontera, Cadiz (1984), Spain. Nowadays she lives and works in Madrid

Her work tries to review figurative painting from the late 20th century. She experiments in a very flexible process that provides her with a wide range of plastic possibilities.

A process in which discovery takes on a leading role with plenty of impulsive rhythms. The changes of scale and the emphaticness of the colors serve the artist to decontextualize objects and create new realities. Her works are characterized by the use of a spontaneous and vibrant brushstroke, demonstrated in her interest in the pictorial medium that goes beyond its use as a mere representation of what she sees. In addition, it is remarkable her background as furniture designer, something that could be seen when she assembles, paints, cuts and conceives round figures over plane backgrounds.

Nano4814

Born in Vigo, Spain (1978). Works and lives in Madrid.

His artwork is intuitive and multidisciplinary (painting, sculpture, installation, wall painting), he could even combine several techniques in the same piece. His dynamic compositions start from figuration and anthropomorphic forms to become abstract images. He overlaps and mixes parts of human bodies in precarious balance. In his latest works, the image is distorted, as it tends to further decompose the human figure, reducing it to basic parts such as noses, mouths or eyes that reinforce that sense of abstraction.

He conceives oniric scenarios, combining symbolic elements that frequently appears in his artworks: brick walls, perforated wire fences, broken wooden palisades ... Objects that speak of intrusion and transgression, acting as some kind of mask. Barriers that suggest or hide a truth, giving clues but avoiding clarifying the painted (or sculpted) reality. Sort of ambiguity that is the most important characteristic of Nano's work.

Louis Lambert

Born in Lille, France (1978). He has been a fundamental piece of the urban art scenario in Madrid since 2001.

Lambert combines the punk aesthetic of graffiti with the popular language, having as a result a symbolic perspective of real life. His works also have strong influences of the symbolism of primitive art. His artworks show an intuitive force, combined with a high dose of color and dynamism, which give to his pieces an authentic character.