Daniel Rey is a Venezuelan-Spanish artist living and working in London. He has a background in architecture, studied in Caracas and Milan and practised in Milan and London. In 2020 he left the profession to focus on art. He works across painting, installation and performance.

​

Rey is interested in the experience of a body that lives in between. Between the political landscape of Venezuela and the organisation of London. Between the violence a man is taught to carry and the tenderness he is taught to hide.

​

In Venezuela the body is deeply connected to the landscape. But that landscape lives in memory, his own and the collective one, and it is charged with political ideas and events that keep transforming a country in permanent crisis. Rey works with that landscape as a political condition rather than a setting.

​

The performances hold the tension between violence and embrace. He brings the machismo he was raised inside as far as he can take it, and then looks for reconciliation through collective acts of tenderness. This is rooted in ritual, and in the religious practice that shaped how bodies gather in Venezuela. Men come together to touch each other without shame and without asking permission. For many people that is uncomfortable to watch. That is the point.

​

His process is collaborative. He invites his community to interpret a set of open acts, each person deciding how to inhabit them. The work keeps its capacity to surprise him.

​

Rey holds an MA in Fine Art from Central Saint Martins. He was awarded a studio residency at the Sarabande Foundation for 2024–2025. His work has been shown at the Sarabande Foundation, London (solo, 2025), Camden Art Centre, London, V&A East, London, Grundy Art Gallery, Blackpool, the Croatian Pavilion at the 60th Venice Biennale, and The Koppel Project, London. He received the LVMH Earth Award in 2023.