We have a busy month of August ahead; I will be celebrating my 40th Birthday and getting our next exhibition ready!
The ‘Rock & Paper’ exhibition, curated by Ace Art will open on Tuesday 5th September 2023 at the Fine Arts Gallery, Gibraltar. It will feature the works of the Cane-Yo group, an art community that our very own local artist Karl Ullger forms part of.
You might be wondering what Cane-Yo is, I asked Karl the same thing a few years ago! During a chat at his ‘Lockdown with Cane-Yo’ solo exhibition Karl answered most of my questions. For Karl, art and the Cane-Yo community was his escape from lockdown. During the pandemic like most of us, Karl felt restricted and couldn’t work on the genre he is mostly known for, landscapes. Therefore for this reason he turned to social media where he found and was welcomed into this creative community. Karl describes Cane-Yo as “a movement or a creative space composed of contemporary artists”. He connected with over 1800 artists from around the world who were in the same situation as he, stuck at home. They all became very close he said, “We all support each other, people put their photos and references forward and whoever wants to paint them can”.
So essentially hundreds of artists joined the community online and shared their lockdown moments via photos and chats and then used these images as references for paintings. Cane-Yo was now a community who had found an escape with their new adopted figurative genre with its artists producing exceptional pieces. Some of which have ended up in my ever growing personal collection. With the pandemic over the community was now free to exhibit their works at galleries. Fellow Cane-Yo artist Tsjebbe Van Damme who I had the pleasure of meeting last year in London has already set the bar very high by curating two Cane-Yo exhibitions in Antwerp, Belgium. Karl Ullger took part in both and now it’s our turn to curate an exhibition here in Gibraltar.
So you should now have an idea of what Cane-Yo is all about now, but if you’re still unsure I also caught up Milo one of the founding members of the community and asked him the same question what is Cane-Yo?? He explained it as “ A collective, an ever growing organism of international artists that communicate and develop together through digital means, utilising the power of the internet to collaborate on ideas within base framework of contemporary figurative paintings, but still open to the wide spectrum of producing art as a whole”
The exhibition will form part of the Ministry of Culture National Week programme and has taken about a year to organise. We first met up with some members of the group in Bermondsey, London coinciding with an exhibition of Gibraltarian artists in which Karl took part. We spoke about the possibility of hosting it here in Gibraltar and for the past few months we have had loads of paintings submitted to us and have selected around 50 paintings from 21 different award winning artists many of whom will be attending the opening night here in Gibraltar.
I am personally looking forward to this one as we will be showcasing a very creative and different style of figurative paintings from a community who have helped each other out during hard times.
Join us for some art, music and wine on Tuesday 5th September 19:00 at The Fine Arts Gallery as we open the Rock & Paper exhibition which will run until the 29th September.
As mentioned at the start of the article it’s also my 40th birthday this month so feel free to buy me any of the paintings on show!!! Thanks in advance!!
