It’s a whole new era! Or error. It’s hard to tell with events and scenes of daily life going in and out of focus, isn’t it?

Post-urban dislocation has been ratified as a modern aesthetic in recent years – late-term capitalism deflating before your eyes, you may say. Or empty consumer culture run amok with no plan for the future. Perhaps these thematic scenarios are personified by the subjects in these canvasses here from Sebas Velasco, who began this fine art career writing graffiti in the early 2000s back home of Spain.

Graffiti writers are used to viewing a city’s marginal areas, and its refreshing to see a talent like his capturing the scenes without maudlin commentary. That makes it brutal, indeed.

Hosted in a temporary event venue at 15 Bateman Street in London, W1D 3AQ, the transience and economic insecurity of the rudderless gig economy is driven home here as well for “A New Error”. These are scenes you once associated with fallen regimes, now they are merely benchmarks along the route to empty ruin. Velasco’s realism is not quite a love poem, but it hints at it.

“The works are inspired by the freedom of travel and the isolation we all shared the past year, with artists adapting their process to painting at home,” says the artist in a press statement. “The iconic structures are juxtaposed with scenes I came across in transit, just getting lost in a country, stumbling across a village or moment in the final hours of daylight. A romantic view of the journey and process, rather than outcome. Others are very small creations, studies I produced while in lockdown.”

Sebas Velasco “A new error” is currently on view in Soho, London at 15 Bateman St. The show closes tomorrow October 20th. For further detail DM @charlotte_pyatt

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