“ONLY HUMAN” - David Shillinglaw

Only Human | Ana Leovy

“Only Human: maps of emotional terrain, lost in a labyrinth we have created for ourselves. Build it up, break it down, fill it up, empty it out, medicate, meditate, fighting, biting, eat, drink, devour, destroy. Don’t avoid the void. Wrestle the vessel. We are Frankenstein, and we are the monster — transforming, evolving, growing, decaying. We are atoms agreeing, only human: anxious, angry, hideous, hilarious, desperate, doubtful, detached, brave. Celebrate the process, the progress, of cosmic imperfections.” — David Shillinglaw

In this new body of work, Shillinglaw opens up the raw and playful spirit of his sketchbooks, where process is valued over perfection, and unfinished thoughts are celebrated as much as resolved images. The exhibition becomes a visual narrative of thoughts, feelings, emotions, stories, and ideas — a landscape of experiments, fragments, and open-ended questions.

The structure of spoken and written language, the circumstances of its creation, and the human capacity for abstract thinking constitute a fundamental layer of this exhibition. David is aware that he plays with language to construct reality. Like a magic spell, abracadabra — "I create as I speak" — he creates new existences on canvas. The artist draws attention to the semiotic properties of language that allow us to understand and name the reality we find ourselves in. The concepts of truth, time, and the critique of modernism are subjected to in-depth analysis.

Monoprints are an integral part of the “Only Human” artistic residency in Lisbon. These pieces embody the rhythm of trial and error, echoing the way humans grow through experimentation, mistakes, and reinvention. His works weave fragments of text with marks, images, and symbols, creating a powerful extension of the mind: an open terrain of memory, imagination, and emotion.

In Only Human, Shillinglaw confronts the turbulence of our times — climate anxiety, global confusion, information overload, and emotional burnout — while inviting viewers to reflect on their own contradictions, coping mechanisms, and belief systems, balancing in the space between the personal and the universal.

Using a unique visual language, the works express themselves especially on an emotional level, celebrating vulnerability, humor, and the struggle with the very fact that we live in these times. “We are both the problem and the solution,” says Shillinglaw, as he wrestles with the world, poking at paradoxes and leaning into ideas of forgiveness — of ourselves, the generations before us, and the generations to come — for the damage done to each other and to the planet. Empathy becomes the guiding force, drawing maps that use compassion as a compass.

The exhibition transforms the gallery space into a curious and playful environment — echoes of snakes and ladders and ancient hieroglyphics, layered compositions become spaces to get lost in rather than windows to look through. Here, Shillinglaw builds up and breaks down borders and boundaries in a visual dance between destruction and construction, growth and decay, offering playful and poetic alternatives to the structures we have set in stone. “A line is a dot that went for a walk” artist repeats after Paul Klee.

We are the only species capable of shaping the world in such extraordinary ways, yet we are still full of mistakes. However far we go, we are — all of us — only human.”