Dis Berlin: Poemas Soñados

VETA by Fer Francés is pleased to present Poemas Soñados, the first exhibition of Dis Berlin (Spain, 1959) at the gallery, the result of a collaboration with the historic Guillermo de Osma gallery.

Dis Berlin is one of the most important artists of contemporary Spanish figuration. Since his first exhibition in 1982, at the age of 22, he has been dedicated exclusively to painting. Self-taught, his training has been nourished by his admiration for the great masters from Pompeian painting to the classics of the twentieth century: Klee, Matisse, De Chirico, Picabia, Meret Oppenheim, Polke... Equally important in the formation of his world have been literature, cinema and music, inseparable companions of his daily life.

Known above all for his figurative register, Dis Berlin's work is part of his vast personal archive of images that constitute the basic pillar of his imaginary. Beneath its clarity, beneath its orderly arrangement, his works are like placid islands, supported by a solid layering of images and crisscrossed by a complex network of perceptions. Berlin approaches his chosen themes with great passion and although he then subjects them to a slow reflection, to a certain cooling down, he maintains sufficient courage so that irony does not destroy them completely, but administers it in the precise doses to attenuate the overly penetrating aroma of a solemnity that would also deteriorate his poetics.

Behind the kaleidoscopic appearance of his work there are central themes and obsessions: women, the sky, "Wonderland", his "Cantos" on the basic concepts of Homo Sapiens, metaphysics, Paradise, the incessant metamorphosis of forms... Among his exhibitions it is worth mentioning: El viajero inmóvil organized by the Museo de Teruel where his blue period (1984-86) was reviewed, his retrospective El reino de las metamorfosis produced by the IVAM of Valencia and which was also shown at the Centro Cultural Conde Duque in Madrid, the exhibition curated by Juan Manuel Bonet for the Bancaja headquarters in Valencia under the title El museo imaginario de Dis Berlin, Caleidoscopio, which reviewed his work on paper from 1986 to 2000 and which was shown at the Museo de la Universidad de Alicante, the Centro de Arte Museo de Almería, the Museo de Teruel and the Fundación Unicaja de Málaga. The exhibition Homo Sapiens held at the CEART in Fuenlabrada in 2016 collected from a good part of his work from previous years.

His work is represented in different public collections such as the IVAM in Valencia, the Marugame Hirai Museum of Spanish Art in Japan, the Bancaja Foundation in Valencia, the Museo Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid among others.