Between ruins, overflowing symbols, and heavy silences, Gabriel O’Shea builds a body of work that resists the obvious.

Rooted in the fragmented and visceral, O’Shea’s universe operates as a field of tension between what was once sacred and what now survives as a fragment, relic, or remnant. His visual practice orbits around the philosophical: an attempt to understand what remains of us when everything else has faded.

Some images defy direct observation—they trigger unease. Bodies stripped of context, surfaces that seem to breathe, forms trapped between the real and the symbolic. What appears at first glance to be a figure becomes an open-ended sign. His work inhabits an in-between space: the broken, the uncomfortable.

Through materials like wax, concrete, and leather, the artist constructs pieces that don’t explain themselves—they confront us. More than representing the body, they implicate it. In this dense sensory universe veiled in a spectral gray atmosphere, O’Shea proposes a new way of seeing—one that eludes the eye and reaches instead for what’s hidden.

What drew you to the body as a central theme in your work?

The body is a trace and a wound. I’m not interested in depicting it as ideal, but as what’s left behind: fragmented, deformed, silent. As a child, growing up with family conversations around medicine, I came to see the body as a profound and intimate language—one that can say more than words ever could.

I’m drawn to what’s usually concealed: torn skin, asymmetry, viscosity, the visceral—what spills over. I’m not looking for beauty in the traditional sense, but rather for intensity. Something that unsettles, that cracks open whoever’s looking.

What role does silence play as a tool in your work?

Silence is where the image breathes. But also where it becomes unsettling. I’m interested in the kind of silence that isn’t empty, but charged—with presence, with tension. A space where something seems about to happen but never fully reveals itself.

In many of my pieces, the figures are alone or trapped in rooms with no clear context. That ambiguity creates suspense—like pausing a film in a scene we’ll never get to see fully play out. That silence triggers a kind of anxiety. It’s not clean or peaceful—it’s thick with suggestion. Like a stage with no dialogue, where every character is hiding something. The absence of narrative forces the viewer to fill in the blanks. And what we project into those gaps is often more disturbing than what we’d see if everything were spelled out.

You often work with materials that evoke skin. What role does the illusion of the living play in your pieces?

I like to push that threshold between what’s alive and what’s not—between movement and stillness. The illusion of “skin” or something “human” in a piece provokes a visceral response in the viewer, and that reaction is what I’m after.

Some of my work leans into the uncanny valley—that moment when something almost human becomes eerie because it’s not quite right. I’m interested in that tension between the familiar and the strange, between something that should generate empathy and instead causes discomfort.

Through deformed bodies, textures, and organic materials, I try to provoke perceptual doubt. I want something seemingly normal to reveal a fracture. It’s not about illustrating the unsettling, but about provoking it. I want to create images that don’t resolve quickly—images that linger like an unanswered question.

In your stone pieces, what do the nails represent?

This particular piece was originally meant to resemble a kind of torso. If you look at it from the side, you can make out the bust and rib area. It ended up more abstract than I planned. The piece is titled Each One Will Carry Their Own Burden. The idea was that we often can’t see the full weight people carry—emotional burdens, pain, grief—and those invisible weights can feel just like this sculpture.

I also reference religion in my work a lot, using chains to symbolize the weight we still carry from religious structures—how those beliefs continue to shape us today, even generations later.

What draws you to time as represented through decomposition or breakage?

Decomposition reveals a raw truth. There’s a brutal kind of beauty in what breaks. I’m interested in time not as a linear narrative, but as wear, erosion, scar. What’s broken often says more than what’s intact. I’m drawn to remnants—things that endure despite deterioration. Fragments carry stories, even without explaining them.

Your pieces avoid the decorative but remain deeply aesthetic. Where do you draw the line between beauty and meaning?

What interests me is whatever demands attention. Beauty in my work acts as a lure—it draws you in, then confronts you. For me, art is like a wound, and the pieces have to touch that nerve. If they were just decorative, I wouldn’t be interested.n. 

In pieces like Corpus, you explore spirituality and absence through the body. Why do you return to these themes?

I return to spiritual themes because I was raised in a deeply religious environment. Over time, I watched that faith fall apart. In my work, spirituality appears as a remnant: a fragmented body still holding symbolic weight.

Phrases like “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani”—Christ’s final words—still resonate, even if we no longer believe in the same way. These ancient words feel oddly contemporary. I think we’re still asking those questions—but now we’re shouting them into our screens instead of into churches.

I’m interested in exploring the void left behind when religion no longer offers answers. A void that can lead to nihilism, but also to new questions. In my work, I try to make that wound visible. To show that even in the rubble of belief, there’s still living matter. And that facing the void can be its own kind of resistance.

How did Preludio shape your views on the body and the spiritual?

It was the beginning of a more explicit exploration of how technology is starting to take over the symbolic role once held by religion. I wanted to confront these two worlds—the spiritual and the digital—through pieces that act as contemporary relics: fragmented torsos, faceless bodies, entangled in technologies that resemble new forms of submission.

I approached it not just through symbols but through wounds. That’s why I brought in references from sacred painting—José de Ribera’s Pietà, scenes from Goya—but set them against AI-generated images and materials that suggest decay and obsolescence.

In that tension between the sacred and the artificial, between the real body and its digital double, I understood that the body remains a site of conflict—but also of resistance. Spirituality hasn’t disappeared; it has simply taken new forms.

Your work creates a distinct atmosphere—almost ghostly, but without nostalgia. How do you build that mood?

I think of atmosphere as an extension of the body. I don’t want the work to just tell a story—I want it to create a state of mind.

That ghostlike mood people describe comes from several deliberate choices: the dim lighting, the muted color palette, the materials that suggest erosion—wax, ash, dust, concrete—and the silences. 

What draws you to what’s only partially shown—what’s implied in an image?

What’s incomplete often holds the most power. The suggested, the hidden—it challenges the viewer to confront their own thresholds.

I’m not interested in constructing literal messages. I’m not looking to make obvious statements. I prefer images that leave space for what’s unseen—space where silence, doubt, and reflection can emerge. Sometimes the absence or omission can evoke more than anything explicit.

Interview by: Isabel Flores
Photos courtesy of the artist