Andrew Salgado

http://www.andrewsalgado.com/

"The truth is, at my core I feel more like an abstract artist than a figurative artist; I avoid adhering too closely or exclusively to any term because I believe it whittles what I do to something one-dimensional, didactic, in the sense that I’ve always felt it too superficial to simply aim for likeness in representation. In this regard, it’s important for me to question the nature of the painted image, the figure, and also those concepts not-so-visibly evidenced such as masculinity, sexuality, and identity. I suppose that the way I go about drawing attention to this is by loosening the grip on accuracy of representation; I want the viewer to be very aware that they are looking at a reconstruction – a mark of paint might vaguely (or not so vaguely) represent an eye, or the tip of a nose, but it also exists purely as a mark of paint, nothing else and nothing more. It is this duality of forms that I believe allows me (and hopefully the viewer) to question the painted image. In the act of questioning that, I think the entire figurative form becomes questioned. For me, the fact that I don’t implicitly ‘buy in’ to the image on the canvas, and am concerned about its (de)construction, prevents the work from becoming too solipsistic, self-indulgent, or banal. I like to keep things uncertain: the form, the concept, the figure itself…this is the only way that my viewer is going to approach my work with an open mind and leave the work with their own conclusions."

He works in London has completed a number of new works in advance of his second solo show, The Misanthrope, which opens at Beers.Lambert on October 11, 2012.

discovered at http://www.thisiscolossal.com/