Borondo ‘Animal’ at Londonnewcastle Project Space presented by Rexromae Gallery
05-26 Feb 2015
I love everything about Shoreditch. Not only is it filled with awesome pubs and bars and pop-up food spots and being right next to Brick Lane, it’s also packed with hipster shops that sells trendy things, little trendy bookshops, graffiti wall art at every corner and there's a Damien Hirst formaldehyde cow in a restaurant.
I discovered a massive gallery space with an incredible pop-up exhibition. ‘Animal’ is a solo show of Spanish street artist Borondo in collaboration with Carmen Maín (Spain), Edoardo Tresoldi (Italy) and Despina Charitonidi (Greece). I loved how he curated a storyline for the space like a Tate retrospective show:
Prologos
The Passage
Entrañas
The Order (Fear, Control, Captivity)
La Carne
Eternal
Albeare
Epilogos
'Animal' is a journey that explores our relationship with nature and the attempts to control it. It’s dark; gruesome at parts like the piece ‘Fear’- an image of a mother protecting her children is sprayed onto hay bales, it’s about how she projects her own fear onto her children- it’s interesting how unpretentious the press release is, it’s not like the well-worded major gallery writings. Borondo is an artist curating for the everyday people. In La Carne (Spanish for Meat), a naked girl is painted crawling around an illusionary box that reminded of Francis Bacon paintings (See also his depictions of meat). It’s about a struggle with the mundane and routine that she became domesticated like an animal. You also get to sit on hay bales like a farm animal.
The last space is a great show of Borondo’s paintings. I was surprised because they are very good paintings for someone they described as a street artist. I’m no painting historian but there’s a gestural similarity to superstar painter Jenny Saville that is not easy to achieve. I can see these paintings in any major gallery. Hard to believe the man is 25. Big things coming from Borondo, watch out for him.
Photos © My Iphone









