Nacho Martin Silva

Nacho Martín Silva - Magic and judges

Técnica: Oil on canvas

Biografía del Artista: Nacho Martín Silva's work revolves around a painting projected from concerns linked to concepts such as the fragmentary, the simulacrum and representation or the verisimilitude. Taking the History of Art and humanity or the creative process itself as axes, Martín Silva maintains a constant concern for how to confront the underlying theme through painting, which results in a polysemic work that takes different directions in its formalization. Nacho Martín Silva has a degree in Fine Arts from the Complutense University of Madrid, the city where he lives and works. His most recent individual projects include Il futuro non è ciò che era, curated by Tolo Cañellas, at Box 27 (Palma), Tirar del hilos hasta quedará ciego (Tug of the Thread Until I Get Blind) at JosédelaFuente (Santander) in 2017, and El Gran Estudio (The Great Studio), curated by Ángel Calvo Ulloa, at the Centro de Arte de Alcobendas (Madrid) in 2016. He has participated in group exhibitions in museums, galleries and international institutions such as Galerie Sobering in Paris, Espacio Odeón in Bogotá and OTR Espacio de Arte in Madrid, among others, and his work has been shown at the latest editions of the ARTBO (Bogotá) and ARCO Madrid fairs. He was awarded the Pilar Juncosa and Sotheby's Prize for Artistic Creation in 2017, and his work is the subject of analysis in the publication Nacho Martín Silva by Juan Francisco Rueda published by Nocapaper in 2016.

Martín Silva starts from photographic images to, through different pictorial resources as if they were literary forms, compose paintings that oscillate between the recognizable and the suggested, forcing the spectator to an arduous exercise of reflection before the image and inviting him to abandon himself to the enjoyment of the painting as a fact. The painting is based on a photograph by Hermann Landshoff depicting Leonora Carrington, Max Ernst, Marcel Duchamp and André Breton in New York, 1942. Among the different canvases that make up the painting, Martín Silva introduces some that represent the childhood drawings of his daughter and some of her friends, which they sometimes make in the artist's studio. The freshness, simplicity and intuition of these childish gestures coexist with academic and conceptualized ways of understanding painting in a sincere exercise of admiration for what we could understand as magical thinking and towards the unexpected in painting. Not in vain, the title, “Magic and the Judges”, alludes to the story included in the book of Daniel and represented by Tintoretto “Susanna and the Old Men” in which a young woman “very beautiful and fearful of God”, wife of the rich Joachim, whom two old men spy on during her bath. They try to force her to have sexual relations with them, telling her that if she does not agree, they will say that she has been left alone, without her maids, to be with a young man. Susanna does not give in to their threats. Then the elders accuse her of adultery and get her sentenced to death. Then the prophet Daniel intervenes and, by questioning the elders, ends up proving the falsehood of the accusation, so Susanna is saved and the elders are executed. The painting observed by Duchamp (who will proclaim the death of painting) and Max Ernst could well be a metaphor for Susanna and the observers of the judges; the canvases that do not represent children's drawings from Nacho's painting could well be of the judges and those that copy the children's motifs of magic... Martín Silva's paintings have as many interpretations as there are looks they receive.