Nacho Martin Silva

Nacho Martín Silva - On Piece of Trash, Collage No8

Técnica: Oil on linen

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 of 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.

Projected from concerns linked to concepts such as the fragmentary, the simulation and the representation or the plausible and taking the History of Art and Humanity or the creative process itself as axes, "Martín Silva's painting could be described as one of carrying and reconsideration. Carrying not only because, even using this architectural term, the painter can take pre-established images, but because his studio seems to become a kind of warehouse, a storehouse in which images and works accumulate - or attempts at them. These—which may, years later, find a meaning that they did not have when they were pushed aside, discarded for their lack of relevance and opportunity. The studio becomes a kind of wine cellar; these materials see time pass and the artist returns to them, to the barrel to —now yes— transfer them, recover them. This also makes the study a kind of archive of cartographies; in the disorder, in the middle of the search process, almost of disinterested drift through everything accumulated, the author can rediscover renunciations or attempts that, with the passage of time or the circumstances of each project, can become valid and pertinent materials: they are a kind of flashbacks, of returns to a past through those remains that They show you how solutions or newly opened paths (...)” (Pocket Series: Nacho Martín Silva by Juan Francisco Rueda. NocaPaper ed. 2016) The constant concern about how to deal with the underlying theme through painting 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. Among his most recent individual projects are: The future is not what it was, curated by Tolo Cañellas, at Box 27 (Palma), and Pulling the thread until you go blind at JosédelaFuente (Santander) in 2017, and El Gran Estudio, curated by Ángel Calvo Ulloa, at the Alcobendas Art Center (Madrid) in 2016. He has participated in collective exhibitions in museums, galleries and international institutions such as the CICA Palais El Abdelliya (Tunisia), Spring Break Art Show in New York, the Galerie Sobering in Paris, Espace Odeón in Bogotá, Centro Párraga in Murcia, Centro Centro Madrid, Matadero Madrid, CGAC and OTR Espacio de Arte among others. His work has been shown in the latest editions of the ARTBO (Bogotá), ARCO Madrid and ARCO Lisbon fairs. He has been awarded the Pilar Juncosa and Sotheby's Prize for Artistic Creation, with the Support to the Visual Arts of the Community of Madrid, Estampa-Casa de Velazquez Award or Absolut-Jugada a 3bandas Award. A monograph has been dedicated to his work in the Pocket series: Nacho Martín Silva by Juan Francisco Rueda published by Nocapaper in 2016 and has been included in David Barro's 2014 book Before leaving. 40 ideas about painting. ed. Contemporary Art and Energy AIE and DARDO Editorial, 2013. Piece of Trash In this exhibition, Nacho Martín Silva, winner of the 2017 Pilar Juncosa & Sotheby's Biennial Award for artistic creation, proposes a reformulation of the image through a process that destines the original to disappearance, while forcing the series to perpetuate itself almost infinitely. Understanding the working methodology of this group is fundamental to understanding its meaning, which addresses, among others, ideas such as the elimination of hierarchies in representation, understood seriality as a genealogy of works and not as a repetition or rereading of history and its images through their combination and reordering. The work process is presented as a succession of ordered steps that lead to an unpredictable path: In a first step, the artist takes two small collages (21 x 14 cm) as a model and makes a painting of each one. From here he takes a photographic record, whose development and subsequent printing, on large dimensions, together with the archive images that were used for the two initial small collages, will serve as material to create the first two collages in this series (No. 1, No. 2). Once these collages are were finished, the two paintings that had been executed and that served as material with which to build the first two collages, were destroyed, using a chemical stripper, to take a new photographic record of the damaged paintings. In a subsequent phase, a third collage (No. 3) was created using as working material the large-format prints of the photographic record of the first two collages and the photographic records of the paintings damaged by chemical stripper. From this third collage, a photographic record was taken again, whose print, together with the leftover printed material from the previous collages, served as material to make the next work in the series, which was printed again and used, together with the leftover material from the previous ones, to make the next one and so on in a process whose end only depends on the absolute material disappearance of the waste that is transformed into raw material with each new collage. Piece of Trash, translated from American slang, could be understood as rabble or scum. A praise to the residual and the equivocal as opposed to the univocal. As in the artist's other works, the fragmentary vision and the choice of images associated with key events and stages in history (in these collages we can try to locate remains of images belonging to World War II, the Cold War or the Great Depression) reveals a position against the official version of the facts and the veracity of the image as an archive, offering itself as tools to become an active subject in the construction of the “Great Historicist Narrative”. Precisely in this sense we must understand the set of photoengravings that accompany the collages that, far from being a mere mechanical reproduction of the same, are presented as units susceptible to being combined in different ways to obtain new visual narratives. Due to the nature of the works presented, this exhibition must be understood as one among many possible.