Camilo Restrepo at UNTITLED Miami 2025

The Colombian artist born in Medellín (1973), recognized for his critical stance on violence and narco culture, will participate in the Spotlight section of UNTITLED Art Fair in Miami 2025.
 

An inclusion that confirms his international reach
 

The presence of Camilo Restrepo in Spotlight, one of the most prominent sections of UNTITLED Art Fair, confirms the recognition his work has already achieved internationally. His practice is defined by a deliberately raw aesthetic and a sharp gaze on dynamics of power and violence, addressed through social memory and absurdity. This participation reaffirms the relevance of his artistic proposal and the strong interest it generates across diverse artistic and critical contexts.

Spotlight

The Spotlight section was created as a space to highlight artists who bring urgent perspectives on contemporary reality. Restrepo’s inclusion responds to the strength of a visual language where intimate narratives and collective experiences converge. His work challenges official discourses, delves into social memory, and exposes how violence permeates everyday life and popular culture.

Medellín as root and engine of critique

From his hometown of Medellín, Restrepo has built a practice that employs intensive drawing, collage, and media archives as tools of denunciation. His pieces are imbued with dark humor that undermines solemnity and reveals the absurdity of violence. Works such as The Other Names reconstruct the aliases of criminals circulated in the press, highlighting the trivialization of conflict and the way media often turn perpetrators into almost fictional characters.

In Spotlight, the international audience will encounter this critical perspective, one that turns pain into a field of aesthetic reflection. Restrepo does not beautify violence—he dissects it, exposes it, and returns it as a forceful visual narrative.

Market presence and international circulation

Restrepo’s participation in UNTITLED Art Fair comes at a pivotal moment in the global expansion of his work. In 2024, one of his pieces entered the collection of the Museo Reina Sofía in Madrid, a milestone that solidified his presence in major institutions.

His representation by Galería La Cometa—with venues in Bogotá, Medellín, Madrid, and Miami—has been crucial for this visibility. Through this platform, his work has reached international fairs such as EXPO Chicago and Zona Maco, positioning his name firmly within a growing global circulation network.

An individual and collective triumph

The inclusion of Camilo Restrepo in Spotlight is not only a personal achievement but also a testament to the role that contemporary Colombian art can play in global debates on memory, violence, and representation. La Cometa will present a solo project structured around the central piece Fantasía.

The booth will be divided into two sections. The first, through drawings and objects, narrates the absurd and tragic story of the hippos introduced by Pablo Escobar in Colombia, now an invasive species that impacts both the country’s ecology and its collective imagination. Restrepo transforms these animals into narrative protagonists charged with dark humor and cultural critique, merging myth, violence, politics, and nature in a vibrant visual language.

In parallel, another thread will explore the proliferation of the mushroom Panaeolus columbianus, which grows in hippo dung and produces psilocybin, a compound currently under study in addiction treatment. With a mural intervention evoking prehistoric cave paintings, this section suggests a paradoxical cycle: the violence of the drug trade unexpectedly gives way to possibilities of healing. The presentation invites viewers to navigate between fiction and biology, historical excess and the regenerative force of the residual.

This project marks a turning point in the artist’s career, reaffirming the power of drawing as a vehicle for social critique and demonstrating that from Medellín it is possible to engage the world through images charged with urgency, irony, and clarity.

Critique, memory, and visual narration

More than a record of violent events, Restrepo’s work builds a counter-narrative. Through techniques such as pastel, ink, and cut-outs, he reveals how the symbolic intertwines with the political. His images do not simply document—they problematize the social effects of violence: fragmentation, absurdity, and media manipulation.

Confronted with his works, the viewer is led into an experience that demands critical reading. Restrepo has forged a unique visual language that combines satire, irony, and denunciation, transforming the everyday into a political and aesthetic declaration that unsettles and provokes.