Collection: Roberto López Martín I Game Elements.

Elements of Play Roberto López Martín The solo exhibition “Elements of Play” by the artist Roberto López Martín will take place at the DDR ART GALLERY at Encomienda 21 in Madrid (Spain) , from April 7th to May 9th, 2025. Roberto López Martín is an artist who, through a multidisciplinary work, tries to question the lines of what is socially established as a dissimilarity to the normal, on what is conceived as beauty or the grotesque. To this end, López Martín uses the codes submerged in the images of the mass media, always working with representations that can often be iconic and indisputably manipulated in a social consensus. Performance, video, photography, painting... everything can be part of a collage of information, which serves to talk about these images and how they are degenerated and reinterpreted for a use: consumption. In Elements of Play, he highlights this concept by focusing on childhood, that first moment of socialization when children begin to form an imaginary relationship with their toys. They pour their emotions into these toys, imbuing their dolls with their own values ​​and emotions. According to López Martín, this relationship is distorted when corporations become involved, establishing uses and forms of consumption for different toys, causing them to pre-format a way for children to relate to the world. Thus, with his work, the artist draws us into a universe in which, starting with the grotesque, he creates a fascination with discovering this new form we are observing. This, according to him, could be considered "a voyeurism toward the morbid." Curated by the gallery itself, with a long history of participating in national and international fairs and with a recently opened space in Madrid. “In this exhibition, a continuation of the project Children on TV: The New Homo Videns, I reflect on the elements used in games from a young age and especially on symbolic play, where assimilation is balanced by accommodation. In symbolic play, assimilation prevails in the child's relationship with the meaning of things and even in the very construction of what the thing means. In this way, the child not only assimilates reality but also incorporates it in order to relive, master or compensate for it. In the use of elements from more consumer media and networks where advertising takes on greater importance, at a time when the use of mobile phones and digital elements, including AI, are the order of the day, this exhibition raises a series of questions - where is the frontier? And how does the industry use it to influence our daily lives and, above all, that of our children?”