Opening Reception: Thursday, December 15th, 2016, 6:00 PM to 9:00 PM
On view Until: Sunday, December 19th, 2016, 11:30 AM to 5:00 PM

Artist Talk: Friday, December 16th, 2016, 4:00 PM

Boccanegra made his first steps in the Art World in 2014. The year before, he had refined a concept that he had developed using stencils. The concept itself is simple. You have the shape of e.g. a country and you fill it up with words that are linked to this country. For example: France = famous writers, painters, scientists, politicians, cities, etc. A surfboard = famous surfers. A T-Rex = dinosaurs.

These paintings were very well received and in a short time he got quite a following on instagram (around 50.000 followers in 1,5 years). Via Instagram he was also approached by several galleries and before he knew it, these paintings that he had worked on for hundreds of hours, were hanging in galleries in Los Angeles, Paris, New York, Mexico City, Antwerp and Brussels.

This success made him realize two things. First of all: that with an original idea and a lot of hard work (+ a healthy dose of ambition) you can get very far. The second thing was that during many encounters with (art loving) people he slowly developed a passion for art in the broader sense of the word.

Little by little he started to refine his own definition of the word: ‘Art’. And with that he also started to envision the direction that he wanted to go in and the type of Art that he wanted to make. The kind that touches people not only with the visible but also the invisible, the underlying meaning or the story behind the work. Both things that he personally thinks, distinguishes good Art from Great Art.

Most of his inspiration he gets from history and socio-political themes e.g. Rwandan genocide, the outbreak of Aids in the USA, sexual scandals in the Catholic Church, the CTE crisis in the NFL. His degree in History and extensive travels are undoubtedly responsible for this.

With this work about American Football he wants to visualize both the good side of American football. The glamour, the fame, the atlethism, team spirit. But also the dark side that society would rather ignore: the many injuries, the brain damage and domestic violence.

For him, the interesting thing about this situation is not the way the NFL is dealing with it, by paying hundreds of former players millions of dollars to prevent further lawsuits. He think it’s more interesting to see how the American society is treating their (former) heroes.

It’s as if as long the players can play (and entertain the crowd) they are Gods. But once these players need the society or their community for help (psychological or physical) they turn their backs to them