Hernan Salamanco
Hernán Salamanco is a young Argentine artist who lives and works in Buenos Aires and is represented by Braga Menendez Arte Contemporaneo. In the 1990s he was part of the group Ø cero barrado exhibiting in non-conventional spaces. He began to paint using industrial enamel paint on "for sale" metal signs which started to pop up when Argentina went into economic collapse. His paintings are deeply sensual and it is hard to question their immense magnetism. They silence the signs' original shouts yet they sentence an order of profound change. Their utopian function dreams of new ways of seeing paint. One which ruptures silence.
"The painter covers the metal sign with the purpose of deferring the effect of the collapse of the notion of home. The "absence of home is translated as an institutional failure.
For those of us who had to listen - disappointed - to a phrase such as "The house is in order", what a painting produces at a symbolic level…In Argentina there has been a house of art, both in actual and metaphorical terms. Hence, an operation such as Hernán Salamanco´s is referred to and delimited by the wish to restore a loss."
These powerful pieces, visual reconstructions of interiors (white goods can be seen on the left of Alta Vista, 2007) are broken through with erosive splashes of paint, like matted acid corroding through the stability of the concept of 'home'.
Copyright Maria Tidball-Binz, Lodeveans Collection
Shown by
Galería Braga Menéndez Arte Contemporáneo, Buenos Aires
"The painter covers the metal sign with the purpose of deferring the effect of the collapse of the notion of home. The "absence of home is translated as an institutional failure.
For those of us who had to listen - disappointed - to a phrase such as "The house is in order", what a painting produces at a symbolic level…In Argentina there has been a house of art, both in actual and metaphorical terms. Hence, an operation such as Hernán Salamanco´s is referred to and delimited by the wish to restore a loss."
These powerful pieces, visual reconstructions of interiors (white goods can be seen on the left of Alta Vista, 2007) are broken through with erosive splashes of paint, like matted acid corroding through the stability of the concept of 'home'.
Copyright Maria Tidball-Binz, Lodeveans Collection
Shown by
Galería Braga Menéndez Arte Contemporáneo, Buenos Aires
