I Do Not Miss Heaven
Aitor González
3 - 27 September, 2026
Opening of a new curatorial programme at DES BAINS, a solo exhibition by Aitor González interrogates the visual language of landscape. Expansive skies punctuated by stars unfold above architectural forms resembling boxes, walls or foundations, creating a tension between infinite space and structures of human making.
The paintings are informed memories of the Spanish and Andean night skies, as well as a piece of curious family history. González’s grandfather built a series of small wooden boxes for his grandmother as gifts during the early years of their relationship. Ornate, carefully crafted, lined with velvet and sometimes marked with initials, the boxes hold photographs, jewellery, letters, keepsakes, religious charms and traces of family life across generations.
As González makes frames for his own paintings by hand, it creates a question of to which degree one can contain something as big and ethereal as memories of the skies – the paintings become windows to emotional and psychological landscapes for the viewer to inhabit. The boxed forms attempt to hold experiences that ultimately resist containment, just as the paintings resist straightforward readings through autobiography or cultural identity.
The paintings are informed memories of the Spanish and Andean night skies, as well as a piece of curious family history. González’s grandfather built a series of small wooden boxes for his grandmother as gifts during the early years of their relationship. Ornate, carefully crafted, lined with velvet and sometimes marked with initials, the boxes hold photographs, jewellery, letters, keepsakes, religious charms and traces of family life across generations.
As González makes frames for his own paintings by hand, it creates a question of to which degree one can contain something as big and ethereal as memories of the skies – the paintings become windows to emotional and psychological landscapes for the viewer to inhabit. The boxed forms attempt to hold experiences that ultimately resist containment, just as the paintings resist straightforward readings through autobiography or cultural identity.
As a counter balance, a series of smaller drawings created with Sharpie pen and crayons link to González’s broader body of work populated with hybrid, anthropomorphic characters: flowers and moons, dogs and houses that mischievously or melancholically morph, echo and change shape. They do not offer an easy shortcut to understanding migration and spiritual inheritance, or the formation of a brand new self away from the places of origin. Presented alongside the landscapes, they create a multi-layered universe that is suddenly more than the sum of its parts – memory, personal history, dreams and imagination.
The exhibition’s title, I Do Not Miss Heaven, echoes this sense of reaching for more, of possibility that is beyond the default cultural script. The paradise is not a place left behind, but something continually constructed through acts of imagination, care and painting itself. Rather than longing for another world, new worlds can be made within this one. Across his practice, González is interested in how images, stories and symbols travel over time, shifting and reappearing like memory itself.
The exhibition’s title, I Do Not Miss Heaven, echoes this sense of reaching for more, of possibility that is beyond the default cultural script. The paradise is not a place left behind, but something continually constructed through acts of imagination, care and painting itself. Rather than longing for another world, new worlds can be made within this one. Across his practice, González is interested in how images, stories and symbols travel over time, shifting and reappearing like memory itself.
Text by Anastasiia Fedorova
Aitor González (b. 1994, Valencia, Spain) is a visual artist based in London whose practice moves between drawing and painting to explore memory, identity and processes of self-creation.
His work is rooted in storytelling and the construction of imagined worlds, where plants morph into animals, figures dissolve into symbols, and text appears as part of the image.
These scenes trace fragile connections between generations, family histories and personal becoming. González grew up in Valencia and has lived in London since 2019. Since 2016, he has been building an archive of drawings and paintings that draw from his family’s social and cultural history. His practice often looks back to childhood drawings, embracing a visual language that is intuitive, direct and emotional. Through this approach, drawing becomes a way of thinking, a space where memory and fantasy can coexist. González’s Quechua-Spanish heritage is central to his work. With deep familial ties to the Quechua people of the Andes, his practice is informed by forms of knowledge passed down through oral storytelling, gesture and shared experience rather than written records. His works draw from dreams, childhood memories, religious symbolism and family anecdotes, alongside reflections on queerness, migration and the experience of forming an identity within a metropolitan context far removed from the places of origin. In 2024, González was awarded a DYCP grant from Arts Council England, through which he worked with archived and recorded family stories to explore ideas of transmission and intergenerational language. In 2023, he co-curated his first institutional project with Auto Italia, curating the first European archival survey of La China Morenas in collaboration with Bolivian artist David Aruquipa Perez.
Anastasiia Fedorova is a writer, curator and researcher based in London. Her work explores sexuality and identity through the prism of art, fashion, consumerism, technology, and contemporary visual culture. She has written for DAZED, i-D, Kaleidoscope Magazine, 032c, Foam Magazine, SHOWstudio, GARAGE, Frieze and Vogue amongst other publications. A large amount of her work is dedicated to exploring queer communities, the ways they are archived and documented, and the poetic and radical potential of queer love and sex.Anastasiia is an acknowledged cultural specialist and has appeared as a speaker at ICA London, the Barbican, the BFI, and a range of SHOWstudio panels. She has been a guest lecturer at Chelsea College of Art, University of Arts London, Central Saint Martins, Birkbeck, Middlesex University, New York University, and University of Michigan. Her debut book, Second Skin, was published by Granta (UK) in 2025 and Catapult (US) in 2026.
installation views
Grandad resting under the Huascaran with flowers, the sun and moon above him, 2026
Sharpie pen and watercolour on notebook paper
41 x 33 x 4 cm
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Fuegos artificiales, 2026
Oil stick on canvas, artist frame
160 x 120 x 4,5 cm
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Sharpie pen and watercolour on notebook paper
41 x 33 x 4 cm
Fuegos artificiales, 2026Oil stick on canvas, artist frame
160 x 120 x 4,5 cm
C A E R, blue star, 2026
Oil stick on canvas, artist frame
160 x 120 x 4.5 cm
Oil stick on canvas, artist frame
160 x 120 x 4.5 cm
Box of stars, 2025
Oil stick on canvas, artist frame
160 x 120 x 4.5 cm
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Searching searching, 2026
Sharpie pen and watercolour con notebook paper
24 x 30 cm x 3.5 cm
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Practicing practice. Sunset, 2026
Sharpie pen and watercolour on notebook paper
24 x 30 cm x 3.5 cm
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I do not miss heaven, 2026
Oil stick on canvas, artist frame
60 x 40 x 4.5 cm
![]()
Two potatoes sprouting, 2026
Sharpie pen and watercolour on notebook paper
24 x 30 cm x 3.5 cm
Oil stick on canvas, artist frame
160 x 120 x 4.5 cm
Searching searching, 2026
Sharpie pen and watercolour con notebook paper
24 x 30 cm x 3.5 cm
Practicing practice. Sunset, 2026
Sharpie pen and watercolour on notebook paper
24 x 30 cm x 3.5 cm
I do not miss heaven, 2026
Oil stick on canvas, artist frame
60 x 40 x 4.5 cm
Two potatoes sprouting, 2026
Sharpie pen and watercolour on notebook paper
24 x 30 cm x 3.5 cm
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