The Unresolved – Fousion Gallery

The Unresolved – new collaborative works by Will Barras and O.Two

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Fousion Gallery
C/ de la Carassa 4
08003 Barcelona
Spain

Show directions

Will Barras and O.Two (James Carey) share a lot of ideas and techniques, expressed in completely different ways in their works. Having been friends, and working in the same field for nearly twenty years, they eventually found an excuse to work together, collaborating on a series of murals for an arts festival in Niort, France in 2019 – with no real idea of what they were going to paint, the artists took turns at the wall, building layers of information and stripping away the unnecessary – Barras’ figurative, narrative style emerging and retreating amongst Carey’s bold abstract clouds and shapes. 

With The Unresolved, Fousion Gallery revisits this process with a collection of paintings made by the artists during lockdown in early 2021. Through text messages and occasional phone calls, what might usually happen in the pub, or on visits to each other’s studios, the artists explored ideas, joked about global pandemics and built a concept for a collection of collaborative pieces. In the spirit of the Surrealist’s Exquisite Corpse, in which artists blindly contribute to an image that is revealed only once finished, each artist paints the first few layers of a set of canvases and then after a socially distanced, clandestine exchange in a lonely carpark halfway between Barras’ Hackney studio, and O.Two’s countryside home studio, they work over and into each other’s previous paint. 

As Barras states; "It presents a problem to solve" – each artist must interpret a composition, a pallet of colours, or fill a space that they might not usually approach. "We’re pushing each other beyond our comfortable range, knowing that anything could come back, you could receive something completely unexpected from the other artist – but you also have an idea of how it might have come about, how it might have been formed … so there’s a dialogue, just spoken in a slightly different dialect," says Carey. 

This blind process has resulted in a collection of unexpected paintings, works that neither artist could have known were going to happen. Unplanned, unexpected, unresolved.

 
Opening reception

29 April, 5 – 9 pm

Artworks
Artworks
O.Two and Will Barras – Wait for Daylight – Fousion Gallery
O.Two and Will Barras – Betting Slip – Fousion Gallery
Will Barras and O.Two – Fink – Fousion Gallery
Will Barras and O.Two – The Duelist – Fousion Gallery
Sold
O.Two – Staring at the Son – Fousion Gallery
O.Two – Pre-Flight – Fousion Gallery
Will Barras and O.Two – Embrace – Fousion Gallery
Will Barras – Night Market – Fousion Gallery
Will Barras – Summer House in Autumn – Fousion Gallery
Sold
O.Two and Will Barras – Wait for Daylight – Fousion Gallery
Will Barras and O.Two – Fink – Fousion Gallery
O.Two and Will Barras – Betting Slip – Fousion Gallery
Will Barras and O.Two – The Duelist – Fousion Gallery
Sold
Will Barras and O.Two – Embrace – Fousion Gallery
Sold

Artists

Will Barras

Will Barras, born in 1973, is a British animation designer and painter. While studying graphic design in the 1990's, Barras became aware and subsequently part of the flourishing Bristol street-art scene and co-founded the influential Scrawl collective. Now leading a London based double life between occupations as a highly decorated animation director and studio artist.

O.Two

O.Two – real name James Carey – born in 1979, lives and works in London. A member of Wizard Kings artist collective, Carey takes his graffiti heritage as a starting point of progressive explorations. Teenage delinquency is transformed and refined into a Post Graffiti texture of abstract gestures, but never disclaimed.