Whilst signs of humanity in Barcelona-based artist Guim Tió’s ‘Unreal Spaces’ may be minute, they alone hold the viewers’ attention.
Tió has painted totems in the midst of vast landscapes: a red buoy wobbles in a darkened lake, at the beginning of a fjord a figure stands contemplating both sky and sea. Rather than being engulfed by the sublime scenes, these totems are colored points that draw your eye — simultaneously anonymous and familiar. “The house, the stars, the desert,” Tió explains, “what makes them beautiful is something that cannot be seen.” Intriguingly, Tió never presents more than a singular figure in this series — allowing the paintings to be construed as depicting moments of loneliness or peaceful solitude.