reports
Fantasy
It is becoming increasingly familiar to include, in the most exclusive and elitist forums of this “new academy” that contemporary art has become, trends—the so-called new surrealism or pop surrealism—and creators from spheres and disciplines—design, illustration, graffiti, cinema or fashion—considered mainstream by the most fundamentalist critics. An upward trend that attempts to break down the artificial barriers between art and popular culture, as well as to reconcile quality and commercial or public success.
The international career of illustrators such as Luis and Rómulo Royo and their continued presence in prestigious biennials, fairs, galleries and art centers confirms that something is moving in the sometimes too atrophied and autistic world of art. With the help of gallerist Miguel Marcos, both creators present in the rooms of the Masia Bas in Platja d'Aro an exhibition that, under the title Fantasy, confronts two series made in collaboration: Malefic Time (begun in 2009) and Homage to Goya (begun in 2023).
The first, of a “more literary” nature, refers to his work in the world of illustration and develops a plot of an apocalyptic future that moves between cyberpunk and mythic and legendary stories. An argument that has inspired a multimedia project that includes three illustrated books, a novel, a manga version, a role-playing game, sculptures and a music album. For its part, Homage to Goya, with a “more plastic” character, summons the pictorial, gloomy and nightmarish universe of the Goya of the black paintings and the Caprichos.
The two series well exemplify the mastery of Luis and Rómulo Royo's work with acrylic, oil and watercolor: the precision and meticulousness of the drawing, the subtle gradations of gray sprinkled with vivid notes of pigment, the vibrant surfaces modulated by touches of light and brushstrokes of color. A technical expertise that they put at the service of a concrete, exact figuration, which, however, far from registering visible reality, immerses us in a subterranean universe of imagination and dream that feeds both on comics and science fiction of the seventies and eighties and on the tradition of interior painting that goes from symbolism to surrealism.
