Julio Anaya Cabanding

ATM Gallery NYC is pleased to present Muses and Museums, Spanish painter Julio Anaya Cabanding’s first solo exhibition in New York, and ATM Gallery NYC’s final exhibition before definitively closing its doors as a gallery in January 2024.

In an audacious act of artistic appropriation, Julio Anaya Cabanding brings to life a striking array of stolen masterpieces from New York's preeminent museums—MoMA, Metropolitan, and The Whitney. Each iconic work finds itself transplanted onto the canvas of abandoned and deteriorated cardboard, creating a profound commentary on the impermanence of artistic legacies.

At the turn of the 20th century, MoMA, under the visionary stewardship of Alfred Barr, emerged as the world's first modern art museum. Barr, considering Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon as the cornerstone of modernity, laid the foundation for an institution that would become synonymous with artistic innovation. In parallel, Muses and Museums pays homage to this cornerstone, intertwining the narrative of Les Demoiselles d'Avignon with the evolution of MoMA and the broader mythos of modernity.

Muses and Museums becomes a reflective journey through the muses of modernity, as Cabanding's work weaves together various inspirations and origins. The timeless figures of Les Demoiselles d'Avignon encounter other muses, connecting the dots between the rich tapestry of influences that have shaped artistic expression over the years. Julio Anaya Cabanding gives us an exhibition of works that revolve around Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, showcasing various muses of modernity. These muses meet other muses and their respective origins of inspiration in addition to the museums from which they came from to say one last farewell to ATM Gallery NYC.

Julio Anaya Cabanding earned his degree at the University of Malaga in 2018. Over the years he has received several awards and honorable mentions for his work. Since 2013 his work has been exhibited in in Spain, France, Italy, Germany, New York, Los Ángeles, Miami, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Philippines, Canada, and the United Kingdom. He has participated in art fairs like Art Basel Miami, Hong Kong and Frieze Seoul. His work reinterprets the works of the great classics of painting in various ways – sometimes on discarded and deteriorated mediums, collected from abandoned places and rehabilitated in his studio in order to give them a new identity in a different context. He also paints these famous paintings on walls in his own city, hiding them in inhospitable places or exposing them in unexpected environments, resulting in impressive contrasts and the decontextualization of those rigid structures established within the art world.