General Assembly, Mayfair
General Assembly, one of the chic and independent art destinations in London’s Mayfair district, is currently hosting the solo exhibition of a very special artist who translates a deep internal loneliness into his canvases, contrasting with his young age. Born in Buenos Aires in 2000 and having completed his education at London’s world-renowned art institutions, the Royal Academy of Arts and Central Saint Martins, Benito Ekmekdjian is only twenty-five years old. However, when you stand in front of his paintings, you are left alone with a mature, striking, and wise melancholy far beyond his years. Running until June 13, the exhibition titled Every Single Person I Loved transforms this loneliness into a visual feast.
Anatomy of an Emotional Migration: Mirrors, Lovers, and Empty Squares
Although the exhibition’s title may seem like a sorrowful list of names or a dry headcount at first glance, it actually serves as an intimate threshold inviting the viewer into the artist’s inner world. Ekmekdjian brings together literary references, personal memories, and artistic nods to the works of other masters he admires on the exact same canvas. The artist’s canvases act much like a generous, hospitable host; making room for every memory, leaving no voice outside, and allowing the past to speak among itself.
Images filtered from the artist’s own life story serve as the main characters of the paintings: separated, alienated houses, timeless wanderers who have lost their way, passionate lovers, desolate squares, and secret-keeping mirrors… For Ekmekdjian, concepts like memory, translation, and language cease to be geographical terms and transform entirely into subjects of emotional migration. All the polyphonic memory accumulated in the soul of a body that moved from Argentina to London comes back to life on these canvases.
Producing with a Childlike Passion: An Intent Far from Expectations
Running a small but remarkably consistent gallery program in Mayfair, General Assembly highlights Ekmekdjian’s deepening connection to the London art scene once again with this exhibition. The artist’s notable past exhibitions, his participation in the prestigious artist residency program in the Loire Valley, and now this powerful solo exhibition stand as the most mature fruits of this artistic partnership.
Ekmekdjian summarizes the pure and unadulterated motivation behind his creative process with these words:
“I want to produce solely for myself, not to answer the expectations of the day or to satisfy the market. Just like when I was a child; pure, calculated by nothing, and only because I love it.”
This exhibition is built precisely upon this naive intent, upon that primal love felt for art. A person who counts the loved ones in their life one by one has never actually given up on them. To protect them from the destructive effect of time and to eternalize them, they count them over and over again in their memory. Ekmekdjian’s captivating exhibition is exactly a rehearsal of this emotional headcount, performed through the language of painting.
Exhibition Details:
- Artist: Benito Ekmekdjian
- Exhibition Title: Every Single Person I Loved
- Venue: General Assembly, Mayfair, London
- Closing Date: June 13, 2026
