Let’s imagine a canvas where the vibration of color dances to the rhythm of distorted chords and frenetic melodies. Let’s visualize this frozen scene, a scene that encapsulates all the concerns of a generation and surprises us with its nostalgically current gaze. The art of Miguel Solans (1990, Zaragoza, Spain), known by the pseudonym Maiky Maik, is the very fusion of all the everyday elements that are recreated in a visual world where the interior and exterior of life intertwine in a complex iconographic-biographical mix.
With the freedom and authenticity of a self-taught spirit, Maiky Maik evokes in his scenes and characters the essence of a generational culture in which garage, skateboarding, and the search for life share a rebellious spirit, rooted in the authentic and unrestricted creativity. Here, the individual is celebrated as much as the collective, and rules and improvisation set the dynamics of everything.
His work not only pays homage to an underground generation but also invites the viewer to reflect on the temporal connection between freedom, adventure, and identity.
A generation that has lived through several economic crises and a world brought to a standstill for almost two years, yet despite everything against them, this generation has forged ahead through intuition, curiosity, and freshness. We have much to learn from them and even more from their way of seeing the world.
I met Maiky during the endless summer afternoons in Zaragoza, our hometown. We would gather in Plaza San Bruno, while some skateboarded and others chatted about our interests, music, and weekend anecdotes. Although many years have passed since then, I still vividly remember how Maiky was always absorbed in drawing in his notebook, and how we were all aware of his extraordinary and genuine talent.
A great artist and a great guy, this is Maiky.
Profile picture: Laura G Escribano – Studio pictures: Victoria Rivers
Describe Maiky Maik in 3 words 😉
Red, blue, yellow.
Where do you come from and where are you going?
I come from a car factory; my parents met at Opel (the car factory based in Zaragoza, my city) and years later I came into the world. I’m heading towards a house in the countryside with animals, but making some stops in various cities along the way. I still have some asphalt to tread; I’d like to live in many places and have my work allow me to do so.
There’s an idea in Spain that if you’re not in a big city like Madrid or Barcelona, it seems your work won’t see the light of day. What do you think about this, and what are your experiences in this regard?
Certainly, you get much more exposure and what you do resonates more in big cities simply because people have their focus on them. The buzz is there, which doesn’t mean that things don’t happen in smaller cities like Zaragoza. In fact, my artistic career has developed here, and that has allowed me to venture out to other larger cities. Plus, there are social networks. Personally, I have mixed feelings because I love living in Zaragoza, but I feel like it’s time for a change. Maybe Mexico City?? Who knows!
The reality of medium-sized cities and current artistic creation. Support, impulses… etc… What would you say to the Maiky Maik of 10 years ago? And to the one from 5 years ago?
To the one from 10 years ago, I’d tell him not to go out so much and to start painting, and to the one from 5 years ago… I guess the same, haha. No, I wouldn’t lecture them too much either. I think in the end, everything I’ve done has led me to where I am and given me the vision of the world I have. I prefer not to change the past; I’ve seen too many movies where that ends badly.
If you had the power to decide one thing to do in your city, what would you do?
It would be cool to create a space together with others where we could create, exhibit, and gather, where people could come to do concerts and organize events without anyone bothering us – people here can be very annoying. There used to be some spaces like this, but the government we have has shut them all down.
Exploring the connection between your past and present can reveal your way of interpreting the world. How do you think this is reflected in your work?
My work has an underlying theme of decadence. I feel we live in a society where we care so much about what others think of us that we project an image that everything is fine and that we are “normal” people so as not to be singled out or judged. In my paintings, something similar happens. I represent scenes where there’s a certain “stability,” but you feel that deep down, something isn’t right. It’s like covering shit with flowers. It’s somewhat critical, and I like to play with satire and irony from the perspective of someone who doesn’t like to take things too seriously.
You reimagine the iconography and narrative of an entire generation, and we see in it a mix of garage culture with skate culture. How do you define your work? And how do your friends define it?
My work is like the back of a skatepark, where you take your first puff of a joint and people philosophize about UFOs. It stems from a need for expression. I consider myself quite an observant person, and when I walk down the street, I feel that a thousand things are happening around me. I create scenes from an archive that mixes memories, dreams, things I see, and things I think. All of this passes through the filter of my vision of things and that critical thinking of a disconnected and broken society, as well as a perspectivist thought expressed in a subtle and symbolist manner.
I asked my friend Laura, and this is what she says about my work:
“As if in trying to capture a moment of memory, all movements were frozen without logic articulating them, attempting to breathe life with primary colors into what has already been discolored by the passage of time. A memory driven by emotion rather than accuracy”
What a gal, she explains it better than I do.
Wow, thank you Laura 😉 How interesting… so, are we talking about love? “a memory driven by emotion rather than accuracy”
Of course! Always love! Although I think she’s referring more to the fact that I’m more interested in expressing an idea, an emotion, or whatever, rather than the accuracy of a scene on a pictorial level.
Influences, inspirations, music… where does it all come from, what are your interests and which artists blow your mind?
When I started skateboarding at 14, I found myself wrapped up in a sociocultural fabric that encompassed music, fashion, photography, cinema, etc… I’ve talked about this with many friends who skate or used to skate, and we all agree on the same thing, whether we’re artists, musicians, or work in a motorcycle shop – skateboarding has made me who I am and has given me the critical vision I have. When I was studying, I was inspired by a documentary called “Beautiful Losers” that focuses on the careers of several artists like Ed Templeton, Harmony Korine, among others, who come from skateboarding, graffiti, etc., and I said: that’s literally me.
I’m interested in everyday life, magical realism, nature, scary stories, and the supernatural. Artists that blow my mind are: Henry Taylor, Paula Rego, Alice Neel, Danny Fox, Appag Guideon whose work I just discovered yesterday and loved, German expressionists, etc…
And all this Western world? Your work seems to come from Texas! Or Nashville!
I guess I have to talk about skateboarding again. Well, in the end, you’re receiving many inputs from the USA – videos, music groups, aesthetics… Also, I think American society really well represents that decadence I like to talk about and that pretense that everything is fine when in reality everything is terrible. The cowboy figure, for example, conveys the image of a tough guy, but I like to imagine that he’s a person tormented by having to maintain that role. Besides all that, aesthetically, I find the deep America vibe cool – cowboy boots, Coors Light propaganda t-shirts or some tobacco brand, bowling shirts, it’s my thing.
Tell me about one of your works and its story.
“Last Ride” is one of the latest works I’ve painted. They used to say about Othar, Attila’s horse, that where it passed, grass would no longer grow. The rider isn’t Attila but a cowboy (what I mentioned earlier). As a child, a horse almost threw me off. I wanted to represent the sensation of falling that occurs when you’re falling asleep. In a way, it’s an autobiographical painting, like most of them actually.
Is there any work that you consider has been key in your growth process?
A commission I had for a hotel. You could say they were among my first works. Until then, I had dedicated myself to illustration and painted using flat masses of color. For that commission, I decided I wanted to try to do real painting, so I jumped into the deep end and I loved painting that way. Since then, I started to focus on developing my own work.
Also, a self-portrait I did for the series of paintings I painted in Berlin. Until then, I had never worked based on a reference image, I always painted from mental images, but for this series, the self-portrait seemed to make sense, and since then, for some pieces, I do add some characters from reference photos. I think it adds to the painting and doesn’t change the meaning of my work.
What is your creative process?
I start from the basis that I want to address a specific theme. The paintings come to my mind through various channels. Maybe seeing something sparks an idea, sometimes I wake up at night and my brain is totally activated and suddenly something comes to me, divine inspiration, or whatever, that’s why I like to always have a notebook handy to jot down ideas. Also, lately I’m writing quite a bit which helps me understand my work and develop my discourse, and it makes it easier for me when projecting it onto a canvas. When it comes to painting, generally, when I have more or less clear what I want to represent, I start.
I don’t like to make too closed sketches because in the process of painting I’m open to many changes, I add and remove things on the go, it’s like a kind of dialogue between the work and me, and it evolves as if it were alive. Sometimes, if something doesn’t convince me, I prefer to cover it and paint over it. I also like that rectification to be present in some way. As a spectator of other artists’ work, I really enjoy understanding the process and the phases the artist has gone through just by looking at a painting.
There’s always an attempt to capture the essence of the everyday from a fictional everyday, but sometimes it seems that fiction and biography are simultaneous…
Indeed, I find it interesting to talk about the everyday. I believe that observing how people face their daily lives says a lot about them and about us as a society. On the other hand, I’m a very scattered person; I easily get abstracted and go to another planet as soon as I let my guard down. Most of the scenarios I represent are generated in my imagination, which creates liminal and somewhat dreamlike spaces that converge with these characters who are the protagonists of my works. In this way, everything is somewhat decontextualized. It’s also true that I’m not interested in representing reality faithfully, but rather in transmitting an idea.
Well, it depends a bit on my mood when I’m painting. If I’m sad, everything takes on a darker, more melancholic tone, more blue, I get intense. When I’m happier, I might get a bit more naive, but I don’t abandon that decadent, bizarre aftertaste. I also want to convey the vision of a generation that was left somewhat orphaned, a bit in the transition from analog to digital, but I don’t want to get dramatic either. Everything has an approach of laughing a bit at the situation, I think it’s literally my way of thinking and acting in general.
What about the orphaned generation?
When my parents started letting me stay out late, I remember summers in the neighborhood recording Jackass-style videos with a digital camera that a friend had been given for his first communion. We were very naive, I feel there was no information at all, it was the generation preceding a big change in young people’s thinking, much more open and sensitive. Then, while skateboarding, I grew up a bit in a bubble with my buddies, a bit of an outsider. Maybe I was the one who was disconnected and not society, haha.
What is that generation doing now?
Well, I don’t know, I guess getting married and having children, we’re at that age.
What experience has most boosted your belief in your work?
For me, leaving Spain and having a solo show in another country, having people who don’t know you at all become interested in your work makes that impostor syndrome quiet down for a while. Meeting artists I admire in person and sharing common feelings also makes me think I’m on the right track.
Present and future, what are you doing? And are there any future projects?
A month ago I was at a solo show at the Marte fair in Spain with the Antonia Puyó gallery and it was a great experience. I met a lot of people and my work was very well received, there were many people who asked about my work and that feeling is lasting until now! Right now I’m knocking on the door of artistic residencies for 2025 and painting in my studio.
Future projects, I have something on the table with a filmmaker friend mixing slides and painting about memory and the ghosts left by images over time. I also want to do strong research work on certain topics that could bring interesting ideas to my work as well as learning to make tapestries, which I think could fit quite well with my paintings.
What do you say strongly to the MAIKY OF THE FUTURE!!!
I say Hey YOU, HOW ARE YOU, OLD MAN!