Juanma Moreno Sanchez

Juanma Moreno Sánchez - The Uncanny Valley

Biografía del Artista: TRAINING Graduate in Fine Arts from the Alonso Cano School of Fine Arts, Granada, 2004-2009 Master in Application Development for Web and Mobile Devices, Seville, 2013-14 LLP Erasmus Scholarship, Halle Saale, Germany, 2007-08 SELECTION OF AWARDS AND RESIDENCES: 2014 The Pollock-Krasner Foundation, Production Fellowship, New York 2011-2012 Antonio Gala Foundation for young creators, 10th promotion, Córdoba 2010 GlogauAIR Residence Program, Berlin 2006 1st Prize “Lefranc&Bourgueois Scholarships for artistic creation”, Granada SOLO EXHIBITIONS 2020 "On the mystical and the absurd", virtual exhibition at Galería Zunino 2019 “33. The Disappointment”, La 13 dada trouch Gallery, Huelva 2017 “#blessed”, A Cat on a Bicycle, Seville “I was there”, The Electric Chair, Seville 2016 “Never Gone Forever”, Gallo Rojo creation factory, Seville 2014 “Augmented Painting”, Red House, Seville 2013 “Seemingly unrelated stories”, Capuchin Auditorium, Alcalá la Real 2012 “Juanma Moreno”, No-Lugar, the art company, Seville 2008 “Passers-by”, Harz Mensa, Halle Saale, Germany SELECTION OF COLLECTIVE EXHIBITIONS 2019 “Networks of Faith”, Renace Art gallery, Jaén 2018 “Everything fits together”, Zunino gallery, Seville 2015 “A dead pigeon”, Studio 22, Logroño 2015 “Promotion X”, Cienfuegos Space, Malaga 2014 “MULTI/TUTTI/FEST”, Cienfuegos Space, Malaga 2012 “Room Art Fair #2, young art fair” Praktik Metropol, Madrid 2011 “Weisser TV”, 129 Gallery, Berlin “MEHR LICHT, tribute to Chema Alvargonzalez” GlogauAIR Project Space, Berlin “Modern Classic, influence of the past in today's art”, Your Mum, Berlin “II Art Market at Your Mum”, Your Mum, Berlin 2010 “The Mac Gyver Problem”, Galerie im Regierungsviertel/The Forgotten Bar, Berlin 2009 “XXL-Art”, Damian Bayon Contemporary Art Center, Granada “The most elegant of the greenhouse III”, Jesús Puerto Gallery and Royal Hospital Granada 2008 “Jahresende Ausstellung”, Kornhaus of Burg Giebichenstein, Halle Saale, Germany WORKS IN COLLECTIONS Antonio Gala Foundation for young creators Lefranc&Bourgeois, Burg Giebichenstein Sierra Sur Group private collections in Spain and Germany.

The Uncanny Valley by Juanma Moreno Sánchez By Marisol Salanova In the paintings of Juanma Moreno Sánchez (Jaén, 1986) there are many details that invite you to stop, while at the same time stirring up the desire to linger over them. They are not pieces for quick consumption, the kind that the public would discard after passing by them for a few seconds. Something arouses interest and attraction through grotesque or disturbing elements that burst into the composition and provoke a certain admiration, followed by immediate discomfort. One of the secrets they hold is the fact that such elements have been inspired by a generative artificial intelligence. Yes, we are faced with dreamlike landscapes and portraits of strange beings that arise partly from the artist's imagination and partly from the experimentation he carries out with an autonomous system. Thus, we are able to identify figures that are familiar to us but we find indeterminate masses, people with extra limbs and plants or objects in unusual juxtapositions. It is slightly reminiscent of those scenes by Lucien Freud where we discover characters with three arms or three legs, in a singular mix of figuration and surrealism. Similarly, the flesh, the physicality, becomes important in the work of Moreno Sánchez with a plastic language that combines tradition and insolence, sometimes crossing the limits of modesty. The Uncanny Valley theory comes from the field of robotics, was developed in the 1970s, and makes sense in the context of Moreno Sánchez's work. Originally, it argues that when anthropomorphic replicas come too close to the appearance and behavior of a real human being, they cause a rejection response among people. We are captivated by the humanoid because it is similar and repels us because, according to the theory, it activates the subconscious fear that we are all, too, soulless mechanical systems. This connects with the anxiety of uncertainty about perception and the tendency towards predictive coding. We want to predict what is going to happen in our daily lives and in the paintings we look at; if we don't succeed, the feeling is bittersweet. It is exciting on the one hand and frustrating on the other. Nothing bad is happening in the scenes depicted, but we observe a context of tension that is constant, underlying each of the artist's works that make up the exhibition project. A sinister event is about to occur, the painting seems to indicate this. It shows us the moment before the disaster, a controlled chaos of indeterminate creatures, confused, expectant and beautiful in their strangeness. In fact, the presence of oranges is recurrent, fruits that allude to the transience of all that is beautiful, referring to the ephemeral and short nature of life. But also to the fact that tragedy is perhaps brewing, because both in painting and in film the appearance of oranges is often used as a metaphor to indicate that a problem or betrayal is approaching. Schiller explained from a philosophical perspective that when we feel that something is approaching, “the sad, terrible and horrendous attracts us with an irresistible fascination.” Although most people do not recognize it, artists can allow themselves the freedom to express this because they create a fiction from which to relate the unconscious. That which escapes norms produces fear, an index and sign of desire that makes something unknown resonate in the most intimate part of us, something that scares us into liking it. In an exercise of pictorial liberation, with blue tones and a very special green predominating, different textures veil serene, still and contained faces in each work. Animals with solemn profiles and nature hybridized with mobile, computer or tablet screens populate a conceptual universe in which the abject takes on aesthetic value to return its dark reflection to the viewer.