CHAPTER 6 is honored to present the solo exhibition Snail by artist Willy Nabi. Over the past two years, Willy Nabi’s artistic practice has undergone a significant transformation. Departing from his previous conceptual works, which centered on collages and installations, Willy has shifted toward pure painting. In his own words, he wanted to “humbly” return to the act of painting. This shift was not a fleeting decision but rather the result of a change in his working method—he began creating from his own home. Positioning himself as a viewer, Willy sought to create paintings that would fill his surroundings and bring him comfort, works he would want to live with. This personal and introspective approach became the starting point for his creative philosophy. Driven by this new intention, Willy adopted a simpler and unsophisticated process. He treats the canvas as a blank sheet of paper, blending the feeling of painting and drawing. With spontaneous strokes and a palette that is both pure and layered, he improvises scenes from his imagination within the confines of his home. These works evoke a sense of childlike innocence, anthropomorphic absurdity, dark humor, mysterious unease, and fragmented scar. While Willy never predefines a theme or outcome for his work, he admits that the finished pieces often reveal to him what he was unconsciously exploring—his whimsical narratives, intertwining with deeply personal emotional metaphors, rooted in his life experiences.

The exhibition’s theme, Snail, draws from this context, with the concepts of home and the room serving as central threads throughout the show. The snail, always carrying its shell (its home) on its back, resonates with the notion of carrying one’s sense of home or sanctuary. On another level, Willy was inspired by a quote from the late artist Alastair MacKinven: “A snail leaves a trail wherever it goes.” To Willy, the snail is a fitting metaphor for the artist—freedom is always accompanied by constraints, and just as we needs to stay moist to avoid drying out. The works presented in this exhibition align with its title, resembling pages from a surrealist fairy tale. They are open-ended, inviting viewers to find their own self-portraits within the stories. In Willy Nabi’s paintings, an anthropomorphic snail carrying its home approaches a rainbow gate amid a storm, entering a new life or world…