Miki Leal graduated in Fine Arts from the University of Seville. His imagery is based on records of day-to-day experiences built up over time. He is a maker of images who knows his trade well. He selects, re-frames and suggests re-readings of archive material —records, photos, press cuttings— in scenes linked to the language of film, graphic novels and popular culture. In the words of curator Semma d’Acosta, Leal is 'an artist and a collector, a compiler of signs who gradually builds up sensations based on what he sees'.
Descriptions of his pictures tend to feature words such as 'landscape', 'portrait' and 'still-life' as a result of the re-thinking of genres that can be found throughout his oeuvre. These overlaps between different categories and eclectic motifs link his work with the 'absence of style' which other painters, such as Martin Kippenberger, assert as a style in itself. His viewpoint is apparently one of unconcern, but beneath it lies a far-reaching reflection on the nature and limits of the pictorial medium.
Leal won the prestigious BMW Painting Award in 2016, received a grant from the Spanish Academy of Fine Arts in Rome in 2016 and won the Altadis Prize in 2006. Individual exhibitions of his work have been staged at the Rafael Ortiz Gallery in Seville (2016), the Luis Adelantado Gallery in Valencia (2015) and the F2 Gallery in Madrid (2014). He has also taken part in numerous joint exhibitions organised by institutions including the Federico García Lorca Centre (Granada, 2015) and the Castilla y León Contemporary Art Museum (León, 2015).
Miki Leal graduated in Fine Arts from the University of Seville. His imagery is based on records of day-to-day experiences built up over time. He is a maker of images who knows his trade well. He selects, re-frames and suggests re-readings of archive material —records, photos, press cuttings— in scenes linked to the language of film, graphic novels and popular culture. In the words of curator Semma d’Acosta, Leal is 'an artist and a collector, a compiler of signs who gradually builds up sensations based on what he sees'.
Descriptions of his pictures tend to feature words such as 'landscape', 'portrait' and 'still-life' as a result of the re-thinking of genres that can be found throughout his oeuvre. These overlaps between different categories and eclectic motifs link his work with the 'absence of style' which other painters, such as Martin Kippenberger, assert as a style in itself. His viewpoint is apparently one of unconcern, but beneath it lies a far-reaching reflection on the nature and limits of the pictorial medium.
Leal won the prestigious BMW Painting Award in 2016, received a grant from the Spanish Academy of Fine Arts in Rome in 2016 and won the Altadis Prize in 2006. Individual exhibitions of his work have been staged at the Rafael Ortiz Gallery in Seville (2016), the Luis Adelantado Gallery in Valencia (2015) and the F2 Gallery in Madrid (2014). He has also taken part in numerous joint exhibitions organised by institutions including the Federico García Lorca Centre (Granada, 2015) and the Castilla y León Contemporary Art Museum (León, 2015).