老外 since 2014 Photographer / Illustrator / Architect

Sebastian's motivation is the city: His works are an attempt to reveal everyday scenes of Shanghai: a neighborhood in a city that doesn’t stop multiplying and demolishing; hopeful parents and grandparents in the marriage market; napping kuaidi drivers, street stylists, and baozi-makers. The figures approximate the portrait and encourage an urban feeling – the spirit of a city that disappears and remains, connecting and detaching strangers and friends, locals, and newcomers.

His primary media is illustration, and my planned work is highly informed by two previous series done in 2018 and 2019, respectively. In #squatstudies and Relationships, he high- lighted the way Shanghainese and other ornamental icons breathe life into the city. Employing brush strokes, bold colors, and strong shapes, Sebastian recreated the people and elements he saw every day on the commute to and from work and days and nights out on the town. This mode of working, while seemingly simplistic, was an exercise in highlighting the details that make daily life in Shanghai what it is, with only a few lines enough for the audience to understand the context and its story, the narrative of Shanghai.

The way he sees how the city shapes people and how people shape the city constitutes a tension and a symbiotic dialogic relationship that evokes contemplation and gives us innumerable forms of representation. The eye of the viewer that Correa represents appears to us unprejudiced and intimate, constructing a story that clearly transports us to a physical space, but also to an immaterial place that is the city of Sebastian, Shanghai through his experience, which will always be unique and particular.

Public appearances

2015 URBAN SIESTA Exhibition One Gallery, Shanghai, China

2018 Latitud 31-13 Exhibition Casa O Lastarrias, Santiago, Chile

2018 SQUATSTUDIES Exhibition, XIME Japanese, Shanghai, China

2019 Relationships Exhibition, Depot, Shanghai, China

2019 CITY JUNGLE Exhibition, NEXXUS, Shanghai, China

2019 HEAVEN.EARTH.AGGREGATION Exhibition, ANKEN AVENUE, Shanghai, China

2020 Beautiful Changning needs your support Exhibition, La Cava de Laoma, Shanghai, China

2021 Ayi & Shushu Exhibition, La Cava de Laoma, Shanghai, China

Publications

2018 CHOPSUEY MAGAZINE Magazine, AL WORKS, China

2016 Imágenes y Palabras que habitan la Ciudad Book, AL WORKS, China