A gathering of strangers: Gorka Mohamed - Joachim Lambrechts - Mafia Tabak - Mike Swaney
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Exhibition text
Delimbo’s new exhibition emerges under a suggestive title: Encuentro de extraños (A Gathering of Strangers)
The title might be interpreted as an homage to the Salon des Indépendants, or perhaps as a gathering of the unconventional. On a more straightforward reading, it may simply reflect the curators' free and deliberate choice to bring together four artists who have no personal ties to one another—guided purely by aesthetic and conceptual intuition. And yet, there are invisible threads that connect them.
The first of these is painting.
Each artist approaches the practice with their own techniques, perspectives, and worldview, but all of them—directly or indirectly—embrace figuration as a vehicle to convey their message, whatever form it may take.
Another common thread is time. These artists are contemporaries, sharing the same present, but they come from vastly different geographic backgrounds. This lends the exhibition an inherently hybrid, foreign, even outsider quality. Here, the play on the Spanish words “extraño” (strange) and “extranjero” (foreigner) comes into focus. Both stem from the Latin root extranĕus, meaning “external” or “alien.” Today, extraño is used to describe something odd, unfamiliar, or singular, while “extranjero” refers to someone who doesn’t belong to a specific place. In this exhibition, both meanings intertwine.
The uniqueness of each artist becomes the very strength of the curatorial narrative. The rarity of their approaches, the sense of strangeness that surrounds their work, and the curiosity that their worlds provoke invite us to step through a door into the mysterious.
Just a few days ago, my dear friend Peter mistook a piece by Mike Swaney (Kimberley, Canada, 1978) for the work of an American outsider artist—someone who lives under care and who quite literally embodies the archetype of the marginal-outsider artist. Upon realizing the mistake, Peter apologized but I told him that for Mike, such confusion would be the greatest compliment: for his painting to be mistaken for someone completely outside conventional frameworks, someone whose work defies categorization. That’s the highest praise Mike could receive.—that is his true triumph. Strange. And perfect.
The work of Gorka Mohamed (Santander, 1978) is full of contradictions. (Even his name sounds strange, foreign to us.) His pieces may recall portraits of powerful historical figures, yet they clearly subvert those visual constructs, exposing their absurdity and humor. The abstraction of figurative elements speaks to the false boundaries we draw between abstraction and figuration, and the tension that lies between them.
Mafia Tabak (1990 Vienna, Austria) sees painting as a way of creating mystery through elements that are familiar to us but that we can't quite understand or pigeonhole. As his own biographical text points out, "his work is full of clichés reinterpreted in new contexts". The strange part of his name, which is nothing more than a way of understanding that painting is pleasure, exploration, and does not even require us to remember his real name, is itself a strange choice.
The expressive paintings of Joachim Lambrechts (Antwerp, Belgium, 1986) convey a sense of urgency in every brushstroke. Although he studied at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp, he left before completing his degree, choosing instead a more intuitive path. Humor runs through his work, as does a celebratory tribute to public figures—real or fictional—whom he immortalizes with a vibrant and personal touch.
What truly unites the four artists in Encuentro de extraños is not a shared aesthetic or personal connection.
What they do share is the ability to open doors—doors through which viewers can walk their own path and arrive at their own conclusions. In this exhibition, everything feels strange.
And everything is open. -
Gorka Mohamed
Gorka Mohamed
Gorka Mohamed (Spanish-Iraqi, born 1978) is an artist who splits his time between London and Spain. He studied Fine Art and Design at Escola Massana in Barcelona and went on to complete an MFA at Goldsmiths, University of London. His work explores the tension between irrationality and the rigid systems that shape contemporary life.
Through his paintings, Gorka explores the psychological state of the modern individual, who is disoriented, alienated and overwhelmed by a world saturated with information and imagery. In this context, painting becomes a form of resistance, offering a means to subvert fixed meanings, challenge societal norms and create space for ambiguity, emotion and reflection.In his recent works, he constructs figures and scenes through layered accumulations of forms and objects, a method akin to sculptural or assemblage processes. These compositions often echo the surreal and subversive nature of classic cartoons, fusing humour with anxiety to reflect the psychological and cultural pressures of our time. Drawing from the ruins of modernity — contaminated symbols, fragmented narratives and semantic overload — he proposes new ways of seeing and thinking.Ultimately, Mohamed’s artistic practice seeks to reveal the toxic aspects of our socio-cultural reality, not as an act of condemnation, but as a necessary step towards understanding and potential transformation. His work speaks to a desire to unravel the complexity of contemporary existence, using painting as a critical tool and a deeply personal, ongoing life project. -
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Joachim Lambrechts
Joachim Lambrechts (1986, Belgium) began his artistic journey at the Art Academy in Antwerp in 2001 but soon left to fully immerse himself in the Belgian street art scene. Starting as a muralist, he painted across cities in Europe before shifting his focus to canvas work around 2010.
Lambrechts's paintings retain the raw energy and spontaneity of his street art roots. He never makes preliminary sketches, instead approaching each canvas freely and instinctively. His layered works—often using oil paint, oil sticks, and enamel—bear visible traces of revision and erasure, giving them a palimpsest-like quality.Deeply personal and rooted in memory, his art draws heavily from his 1990s childhood and American pop culture influences such as TV, music, sports, and video games. This mix of nostalgia, spontaneity, and cultural reference creates a vibrant and expressive visual language that celebrates the chaos and creativity of everyday life.His work can be found in international private and public collections, including the Colección SOLO, Bunker Artspace Museum, US, and The House of KOKO, London, UK, Hearst Collection and Easton Capital Collection -
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Mafia Tabak
Mafia Tabak (b. 1990, Austria) lives and works in Vienna. He began painting graffiti in 2006, and this early experience strongly influenced his visual language and artistic identity. While graffiti shaped his foundations, he now clearly separates it from his studio work, which includes paintings, installations, drawings, and prints.
His art is characterized by irony and a refusal to take painting too seriously. He uses familiar materials, references, and clichés but places them in new, unexpected contexts. His forms—both figurative and abstract—are expressive and vibrant, yet thoughtfully structured. Tabak paints with a sense of tenderness and naivety, deliberately avoiding academic techniques, and drawing inspiration from childlike creativity.Though there are echoes of surrealism in his work, he resists being overly influenced by historical avant-garde movements. His pieces often resemble collages, with crayon-like strokes and intentionally "bad" coloring that evoke the joy of unschooled expression.Tabak invites viewers to engage actively with his work, leaving space for personal interpretation. He aims to evoke mixed feelings—awkwardness, confusion, surprise—through his playful, layered compositions. He describes his style as Naive Art or Primitivism, blended with referential motifs and installation elements that reflect his humor and everyday life as a full-time artist. -
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Mafia Tabak, MT 2.9.2019, 2019€ 602.00
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Mafia Tabak, Engine failure, 2019€ 602.00
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Mafia Tabak, Quick Take 100, 2019€ 602.00
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Mike Swaney
Swaney's work combines the charm of naive painting with a delicate touch that is all his own. Each painting is a unique and intricate representation of the world around him.
Swaney is widely known for his expressive paintings and sculptures that invite the viewer to question customs, rituals, and objects from the perspective of the absurd. His eagerness to reproduce situations from our everyday lives means that, once introduced into the work, they adhere to a surrealist logic that leaves no one indifferent. According to Swaney, his artistic vision is informed by the rebellious spirit of Art Brut, especially Jean Dubuffet, as well as the artists of the CoBrA group. Whatever the source or image, Swaney seeks to convey raw intuition.
Swaney graduated from Capilano University in Vancouver, after which he worked in Canada as part of the Humanfive artist collective before moving to Barcelona in 2006. Since then, he has exhibited internationally since 2004, with solo shows in galleries in Barcelona, Copenhagen, Madrid, New York, Berlin, and Miami.
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