After a successful milestone presentation of mostly large-scale works at Hangar 107 in Rouen, Aryz followed up with a 3-day pop-up presentation in Paris in November and the final presentation is currently on view at the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Nancy in France. The rounds 2 and 3 of his Pugna series of exhibitions included medium and smaller size canvases in Paris, and an overview of works on canvas and large series of paper drawings, studies, and sketches in Nancy, giving a bit more personal insight into his practice.

 

The spacious venue of Galerie Joseph in Paris and large rooms of Nancy Beaux-Arts Museum showcased a selection of Aryz's studio works, which present the key elements of tbe Catalan artist's ever-evolving practice. Focusing on the human figure as the main motif, the artist is exploring the theme of conflict and battle through images of men and women fighting or presenting some form of power over each other.

While violent and often explicit in their core, the content is successfully subdued through the use of mostly warm colors and deconstruction of the main image into sequence-like components. As part of his ongoing experimentation and play with the composition and color relationship, Aryz is using the figures and the action merely as constructive elements rather than narrative subjects. Not providing any insight into the storyline or suggesting the causes or consequences of the depicted moment, it's the dynamic of the action that enables him to create endless complementing compositions. All those elements mixed with his focus on preserving the initial and intuitive brush gestures, results in a series of strong, almost documentation-like imagery, making the presentations feel like a warning or commentary on the dark side of the perpetual human behavior. —Sasha Bogojev