Spanish artist Xevi Solà paints the character and emotions of his subjects rather than their likeness. He takes images from film stills, fashion editorials, and social media as his starting point, but never copies them as they are. As the brush moves across the surface, the figure is reborn with a new face that exists somewhere between reality and fiction. The artist says he is drawn to “the beauty shaped by character, contradiction, and emotional depth.”

Solà studied fine art at the University of Barcelona. Over the past two decades, he has held more than twenty solo exhibitions, forging a voice of his own in contemporary figurative painting. He has presented solo shows at Opera Gallery in London, Miami, and Geneva, and at Alzueta Gallery in Barcelona and Madrid. He received the Young Art Award at Young Art Taipei in 2014 and was selected for the Girona Art Biennial in Spain in 2010.

His work begins with speed. He paints quickly, letting his hand move before hesitation can set in before the canvas. Ahead of a full-scale work, he makes a number of small drawings, each finished in a single stroke, and carries that spontaneity onto the canvas. His primary medium is oil paint, but he also works with acrylic, oil sticks, wax, and ink to broaden his expressive range. He uses photographs or video as a guide, yet continually alters color, proportion, gesture, and composition as he paints. The artist explains that the flexibility of paint allows him to “strike a balance between planning and intuition.”

For Solà, the title comes after the painting. Because his process unfolds intuitively, he resists defining a work in language before the image is complete. Only once a painting is finished does he search for a title that reflects its atmosphere without imposing a fixed meaning. What draws him are “concise titles” that point to a person, a place, or a moment. In his view, such titles do not explain the work; they become an “entry point” that opens curiosity and invites viewers to bring their own experiences and associations.

At this year’s Kiaf, Xevi Solà presents three paintings that hold a single summer. The U-shaped booth, enclosed on three sides, is composed as a world the visitor walks into, as if approaching a sunlit poolside. On the front wall, Baptism, depicting women gathered at the water’s edge, hangs beside Tonight, portraying a gathering of men at dusk—two facets of midsummer, its daylight and its twilight. On the side wall, the small portrait September reveals itself only after visitors step inside and turn around: a woman sitting alone at the season’s end. “I hope viewers remember a feeling,” the artist says, “rather than a particular image or narrative.”