Solo show at Underdogs Gallery, Lisbon – December 2025
Water is impossible to control.
No matter how hard we try to channel it, dam it, or restrain it, it will find a way to flow.
Life, as we know, is no different.
There is no plan clear enough, to keep it from unfolding its own way.
Some call it chaos. Others, trusting the process.
It is by using watercolor that AkaCorleone chose to let go.
Out of My Control is an exercise in freedom, in which the artist challenges himself to work with a technique that is, by nature, a physical manifestation of the lack of control. Guided by paper as a visual thread, diluted acrylic paints, and a restrained color palette, he created dozens of works exploring different geometries, textures, saturations, gestures, shapes, and brushstrokes. As he trained his hand, he learned and unlearned.
The starting point was something deeply personal, small yet immense: the experience of fatherhood. With it, life began to somersault in unexpected ways. Out of My Control unfolds as an extremely biographical visual diary of the joys and challenges of daily life, like finding pleasure in a stolen ten minutes to read a book.
Throughout his career, AKACORLEONE has been known for meticulously planning his techniques, colors, and titles before even beginning a work. Here, he does the opposite. Instead of relying on external production, he turns to manual, hands-on, and craft-based gestures developed in his own studio — an exercise in embracing the domestic and the intimately familiar.
This is AKACORLEONE’s fifth solo exhibition at Underdogs, following his first in 2014, when the gallery itself had just opened. Eleven years later, he returns to watercolor and painting on paper — the same mediums that marked his debut — now revisited with the maturity of an artist who, after years of disruptive large-scale projects, rediscovers the joy of play. Guided less by intention and more by intuition, by touching, experimenting, and creating freely, just as his son does. In the water’s flow and the child’s gesture, he finds freedom in letting go.
