Angamos

About

The Angamos street studio was a state of mind, it's a group and it represents an era. It was a place were other painters, graffiti writers and skaters congregated during its off hours creating a cauldron of artistic energy and different influences. This dynamism led to development of the work that we will see in this show that mixes the artist's academic training and a Chilean street sensibility.

The artists in this show are millennials who grew up in a Chile that had opened up its economy and itself to the world. Besides free trade also subcultures like skate and graffiti came flooding into Chile. Those graphic cultures are native to these artists. They have developed their own personal visual languages by honing their training by painting on the street and in art schools, this is the sensibility we are encapsulating in this show

Looking at their work we see themes and ideas that stand out. In Santiago Ascui's work we see pop repetition, hand made geometric figures that together create a sense of unity and uniformity. He works with flat colours to create bold images that perhaps reflect upon the anomie of modernity and consumerism. Jose Benmayor's extensive still life work illustrates the day-to-day consumer items, technology, fruit exports and detritus created by this new globalized Chile in which everything came flooding in with its borders open for business. They comment on contemporary Chilean society and its compulsive consumerism. In the colourful work of Michael Yaikel, we see psychedelic renditions of nature and its native inhabitants, which reflect their importance to the modern world. It is as reflection about how humans abuse nature with extractivism and the destruction of natural habitats. Working with organic geometry he renders the different landscapes with its flora and fauna in a bold chromatic explosion. His work recreates Chilean landscapes in a way that is at once futuristic yet also prehistoric at the same time.

Their own personal languages create a flow of ideas and themes that represent a distinct Chilean aesthetic that will fascinate the London public.

The exhibition brings the artists and their work to London for the very first time. The selection is based on strong individual styles that, when grouped together, convey a perspective of themes, styles, and cultural flavour present in the young contemporary painting in Chile.