Aryz: color, shape and essence at the Senda Gallery

In 2014, the city of Granollers was embellished with a spectacular work by Aryz, a young artist from Vallès Oriental, on a dividing wall on Roger de Flor Street. An intervention that went hand in hand with an important international outlook by the artist with works scattered throughout different corners of the world. Preludio is now the first solo exhibition that will open the season at the Senda Gallery with work by a renowned Aryz - Octavi Arrizabalaga.

The SENDA Gallery inaugurated Preludio , Aryz's first solo exhibition in its space. The artist presents a selection of large-format oils that, from a contemporary perspective, establish a lively dialogue with some of the great masters of painting that have marked his career and his creative universe. That initial moment with the art of graffiti in spaces of the Vallès region is far from over, creating over the years some spectacular and recognized murals, also giants, where he combines human beings with animals and surreal colors, also including muted tones, bone symbolism, with an emotional and ambivalent aesthetic.

• Parallel Ropes (2023-24).

From a contemporary perspective, Aryz values the heritage of traditional painting and highlights the painter's craft as a legitimate means of expression and cultural transmission. Preludio is presented, in its essence, as a link between the past and the present: an intentional return to the pictorial tradition that acts as an introduction or prologue to a more experimental artistic proposal, still wary of showing itself completely.

“I felt the need to grow as an artist and experiment with more freedom. I didn't want to be known only for painting walls,” explains Aryz, who understands the studio as a space of radical freedom where time and technique converge to favor a more personal and demanding research. His recent production reflects precisely this desire to delve into the painter's craft, exploring both its technical aspects and its cultural dimension.

Twenty-five years have passed since the new millennium, and Aryz has established himself as an essential figure in the field of urban art. His work, present in multiple countries, is displayed in large formats full of symbolism. His compositions usually present human or animal figures, with a chromatic palette that alternates muted tones and touches of surrealism. Among the recurring motifs in his work are bones, as well as characters that show viscera, internal organs or the skeleton in sight. Regardless of how his production is labeled, Aryz remains faithful to the traditional techniques of street art, using brushes, sprays, rollers and other tools typical of the trade.

• Lunch (2024-25).

Aryz has stood out for creating large-format murals, a practice that has quickly placed him among the most recognized names in urban art. For the artist, painting shapes on a wall is nothing more than a pretext to play with the distribution of color, and he tends to avoid the desire to convey an explicit message in his works.

The works gathered in Preludio take the form of pictorial collages: complex assemblages where fragments of art history coexist with contemporary gestures and visual references from diverse origins. In this way, details of La Sainte Famille avec Sainte Élisabeth et le petit Saint Jean by Simon Vouet, the emblematic light of Jan van Eyck's Arnolfini Marriage or Rubens' The Three Graces are reinterpreted in compositions that break with chronology to construct an iconographic space in constant revision.

Aryz's creative process—based on adding, removing, and transforming images—allows him to move naturally between reverence and irony. His paintings evoke echoes of Manet, Degas, Calder, Hals, and even Jeff Koons, but not as literal quotes, but as echoes that dissolve into a personal, free, and critical language.

• The gallery owners (2023-25).

Among the most outstanding pieces in the exhibition, Los galeristas (oil on canvas, 300 x 320 cm, 2023–2024) displays an aesthetic that seems to have emerged from the early days of color photography, reminiscent of the glamorous staging of Slim Aarons. But this allusion is never naive: the portraits of those resplendent elites come to life in Aryz's characters, now transfigured by a subtle irony to crack the solemn aura and hint at the fragility hidden behind the facade of luxury.