PIERMARQ* is pleased to present: Sayonara Baby by Mallorcan artist, Bel Fullana from 30 October - 30 November. This is Fullana's first exhibition at PIERMARQ* in Sydney.
Bel Fullana is known for creating paintings of imaginary female characters with strong, uncompromising attitudes. Her work combines brightly coloured oil and spray paint with childlike finishes, taking inspiration from comic books, films from the 1990s and urban underground culture. Fullana’s protagonists are characterized by irony, humor, pastiche, and theatricality, culminating to a unique metallic grunge that brims with sinister yet playful femininity.
In a recent exhibition at Es Baluard Museum, Mallorca, curator Núria Gómez Gabriel described Fullana’s alien, motorbike fantasy world, as a place where feminine figuration blends the “infantile and the adult, the masculine and the feminine, the non-human and the human, the known and the unknown, the impotent and the powerful, the spontaneous and the deliberate.” Fullana’s thematic universe has been influenced by musical movements linked to violence, sex, friendship and love, such as trap and reggaeton. Referencing current musical artists such as Hofmannita, Grimes, La Zowi, Zheani and María Forqué, Fullana forms “a visual genealogy that oscillates between mainstream culture and the margins of the underground.”
Sayonara Baby is a farewell to the ideas and techniques that have shaped Fullana's practice over the years, as she transitions away from her signature compositions seen in works such as Mega Troll, 2024, that depict a fluorescent solitary figure in the foreground of a psychedelic gradient sky. The outlandish character is adorned with delicately drawn tattoos, and spikey, glittered accessories, clad in combat boots and fishnets. The figure fires a gun with claw-like painted fingernails, discharging a childlike, smiling heart from the pistol, confirming Fullana’s sentiment that “the characters in [her] paintings are more cute than terrifying! They look aggressive, violent and militant, but they are just pretending!” Sayonara Baby pays homage to Fullana’s eccentric universe and its colorful inhabitants, as she transitions from the ornamented and otherworldly towards a more inward, intimate perspective.
Bel Fullana (b. 1985, Mallorca, Spain) earned a degree in Fine Art from the University of Barcelona, and has held exhibitions in Europe, London, Los Angeles, New York, South America and Asia.
