Juan Manual Salas Valdivia
Juan Manuel Salas Valdivia exhibited with Collective Ending as part of ABSINTHE §2 & Old Friends, New Friends.
Juan Manuel Salas Valdivia, Untitled, 2019 / Articulation #7, 2019 (ABSINTHE §2)
Bio
Juan Manuel Salas sets his art practice in relation to particular lines of work or research where he explores pictorial phenomena and its possible bonds with contemporary images. In his view painting is conceived as a system of signs without surveillance, Salas’ artistic production is not delimitated by a language or a particular style, which allows him to shift from figurative to abstract painting; from photography to video and installation, depending on the nature of the project. Salas’ work usually starts from already existent photographs or videos chosen from public websites or dead archive in obsolete books all of them being of a banal character of symbolic poverty. He seeks to give these images a new meaning by making them part of the ritual of being painted, transformed in matter and incarnated in a physical body.
Juan lives and works in Guadalajara. He graduated with a BA in Visual Arts from University of Guadalajara in 2014. Recent exhibitions and projects include: Paintings (Solo Exhibition) at Maison Visinand (Montreux, Switzerland, 2019), Instant Gratification (Solo Exhibition) at Cuadro 22 (Chur, Switzerland, 2019), Possible Image (Solo Exhibition) at Juan Soriano Gallery (2018).