[ BIO - STATEMENT - ARTIST CV ]

BIO.

Raúl Muñoz Casassola (Móstoles, 1982) is an artist whose career is built at the intersection of urban counterculture, visual research, and a growing interest in the crossovers between art and science. His childhood and adolescence were marked by the rebellious atmosphere of Madrid's working-class neighborhoods in the 80s and 90s, where movements like graffiti and punk music shaped a direct, intuitive, and visceral sensibility. In the late 90s, he began self-taught mural painting, sharing nights and artistic languages with urban artists, exploring the aesthetics of gesture and immediacy.

He later moved to Talavera de la Reina to study artistic ceramics, a period during which he came into contact with other forms of contemporary expression and developed a growing interest in classical and figurative aesthetics. His constant movement between different cities fueled an artistic search linked to "ordered chaos," accompanied by the choice of various pseudonyms that allowed him to experiment freely and without restrictions.

In 2011, he returned to Madrid and began studying Fine Arts at the Complutense University. During this period, he co-founded, along with other artists and cultural managers, the collective "Sin Ánimo de Nombre" (Nameless), a project focused on collaborative creation and production. Over time, Casassola focused exclusively on his artistic practice, leaving behind cultural management and curatorial work to dedicate himself fully to his art.

A turning point in his career came in 2016 with "Through the Looking Glass," a work that marked the beginning of his research between art and science. For this piece, he recovered and recycled original mirrors from Madrid's old Edificio España, constructing a decagon that functioned as a dimensional kaleidoscope. The visual device, inspired by Lewis Carroll's Alice Through the Looking-Glass, dialogued with concepts from string theory and its additional dimensions, introducing an interest in scientific speculation that has continued ever since.

Following this work, Casassola developed various proposals that delve into this line of interdisciplinary research, including the collection of the infinite, a project linked to mathematical concepts and the visual representation of that which escapes direct perception. This journey has expanded his artistic language towards a more conscious reflection, where the invisible, the theoretical, and the poetic intertwine with the materiality of pictorial work.

His imagination draws from references ranging from classical painting to key figures in contemporary art, including Antonio López, Francis Bacon, Monet, Pissarro, Rubens, and Velázquez. While his early work was driven by a personal and intuitive impulse, today his art integrates study, reflection, and a constant dialogue between disciplines, consolidating a practice that navigates between the sensory, the conceptual, and the scientific.

Statement.

Casassola's work is articulated in a hybrid territory where art and science dialogue to explore what cannot be seen but determines our existence. His work investigates intermediate spaces: between the visible and the hidden, between intimate experience and social structures, between the logic of matter and human intuition. From this intersection, the artist uses concepts from astronomy, physics, or mathematics as catalysts to activate a reflection that transcends the everyday. It is not about illustrating scientific theories but using them as metaphors capable of opening a field of profound, emotional, and critical thought.

This search is rooted in a biography marked by a persistent sense of displacement. Casassola sees himself as an outsider, a figure positioned at the margins, observing cultural movements from outside, approaching them without fully belonging. This peripheral position, from 90s graffiti to his most recent works, has been a constant that defines his way of seeing and creating. While the urban scene was organized around hip hop, he intervened walls with figurative images; while academia classified his work as "urban art," he returned to the street to push his own limits. This contradiction—productive, fertile, deliberate—becomes one of the foundations of his practice.

His current work amplifies this tension by transferring processes of street origin to contemporary formats, combining classic materials with city-worn supports, layers of cement, resins, pigments, and recovered fragments. Wear and tear, fragility, and the imprint of time are integrated into pieces that function as vestiges of collective and personal experiences. The artist conceives these materials as visual equivalents of our own human condition: a mixture of what we show, what we hide, and what remains beneath the surface, like the dark matter that structures the universe without fully revealing itself.

In collections like Materia Oscura (Dark Matter) or conceptual projects like Infinito (Infinity), Casassola delves into this idea by using scientific notions—the proportion of invisible matter in the cosmos, the multiplicity of infinities, the limits of perception—to generate spaces where the viewer can pause, think, and recognize themselves. Science thus becomes a poetic scaffolding that supports an investigation into transcendence, into what remains outside the daily rhythm, and into the human need to find meaning in what we cannot fully comprehend.

His work always starts from an honest position: the awareness of not belonging to a stable place. From there, his work proposes an open dialogue with observers. What he creates connects because it arises from a shared contradiction: we live between hyperconnection and social distance, between individual identity and common narratives, between the desire to belong and the certainty that we remain, in part, spectators of our own time. Casassola transforms this condition into a space of creative freedom, where intuition, matter, and reflection coexist to construct images that invite us to look beyond the obvious.

Artist CV.

Selected Exhibitions, Fairs & Interventions

2025

• ART Madrid, Contemporary Art Fair (Madrid).

• Materia Oscura, solo exhibition. DDR Art Gallery (Madrid).
  Curated by Rafael Doctor Roncero.

2024

• Ithaka, group exhibition. DDR Art Gallery (Madrid).

2023

• FIG Bilbao, International Print and Paper Work Fair (Bilbao).

2022

• un(fair), International Contemporary Art Fair (Milan, Italy).

• JustLX, Contemporary Art Fair (Lisbon, Portugal).

• FIG Bilbao, International Print and Paper Work Fair (Bilbao).

2021

• FIG Bilbao, International Print and Paper Work Fair (Bilbao).

• Librarte, Artist Book Fair (Burgos).

2020

• FIG Bilbao, International Print and Paper Work Fair (Bilbao).

• Distrito Vertical, urban art intervention (Valladolid).

2019

• FIG Bilbao, International Print and Paper Work Fair (Bilbao).

• Live painting intervention as part of the fair's official program.

2018

• Camprovinarte (Camprovín, La Rioja).

• Wurth Foundation Award for Best Urban Mural.

• Artaerorap (La Bañeza, León) — urban intervention.

• Librarte, Artist Book Fair (Burgos).

2017

• Con Mucho Arte, urban intervention (Toledo).
  Award for Best Mural.

• We Art Fair, Conde Duque Cultural Center (Madrid).
  WE ARE FAIR Best Artist Award.

• Latidos, group exhibition (Madrid).

• Hybrid, art fair (Madrid).

• FAC, art fair (Madrid).

2016

• The Change, group exhibition.
  Curated by: Antonio Palumba. PAN Palazzo delle Arti Napoli (Naples, Italy).

• Mulafest (Madrid): Through the Looking-Glass, award-winning installation in the BURN call for entries.

• Muros Tabacalera, urban intervention on the exterior walls of Tabacalera.
  Organized by Madrid Street Art Project and the Ministry of Culture (Madrid).

• Ciudad Anónima, solo exhibition. CEART – Tomás y Valiente Art Center (Fuenlabrada, Madrid).

2015

• Color Urbansur, European project organized by El Arsenal and the City Council of Cordoba (Cordoba).

• Iberencontros, international meeting between artists and cultural managers (Castelo Branco, Portugal).

• Urban art intervention.

2014

• Dak’Art – Dakar Biennial, group exhibition.
  Curator: Moussa Traoré. Espace Medina (Dakar, Senegal).

• Xeex, urban intervention in the Medina neighborhood.
  Curator: Nicolás de la Carrera. Dakar OFF Biennial (Dakar, Senegal).

Collections.

COLLECTIONS. Wurth Museum. Fernando Encinar Collection. Private Collections in Spain, France, Germany, Italy, UK, USA, and Mexico. 

Awards, scholarships & artistic residencies.

Multiple national and international awards.

 

Works by CASASSOLA can be viewed at: 

DDR ART GALLERY, Calle de la Encomienda 21, 28012, Madrid. 

info@ddrartgallery.com

Tel. +34 659819791