APPROACHING THE ONION
September 3 – October 9, 2010
Vernissage: September 3rd from 19h (7pm)
WILDE Gallery is pleased to announce Approaching the Onion, the first solo exhibition of Spanish painter Antonio Santín with the gallery.
Antonio Santín paints scenes of existential ennui, women depicted in domestic yet surreal environments cluttered with material objects. Santín, who specialized in sculpture during his studies, carves forms out of the layers upon layers of paint that he applies, arriving at densely structured yet luminescent compositions. The subjects that Santín selects for his large-scale paintings are primarily young women, who confront the viewer with a stoic gaze, almost morose in its serenity and yet silently defiant, inquisitive and unforgiving.
Santín is a draftsman of exceptional skill. Deriving inspiration from Spanish masters such as Velázquez, Goya and Greco, Santín renders his subjects with precise detail and controlled painterly flourishes. His brushstrokes take on a three dimensional treatment, reducing the paint to graduated matter that is carved away to excavate the inner being of the subject. Santín’s paintings are replete with poetic distractions: the artist’s use of pattern, baroque arrangements of his interiors’ décor, and his attention to the dramatic interplay of light and shadow afford his compositions an almost cinematic aesthetic. The pale radiance of his figures’ complexions set against the chaos of their backgrounds achieves a theatrical quality, a scene staged by the artist.
By photographing his models in their own habitats, with carefully orchestrated lighting and props chosen from the models’ possessions, Santín’s source material is very much his own creation, despite being comprised of found objects belonging to his subject. The artist considers these paintings to be still lives more so than portraits and instructs his models to become “just another object in the room.” These photo sessions are acts of intimacy, in which the artist enters the model’s studio instead of the other way around. Ultimately, the interiors Santín depicts can be interpreted as both private domestic spaces and psychological landscapes.
In his articulation of the subject, the models’ clothing takes on a metaphorical significance. Ornate in their abstraction, these dresses are exquisite chrysalides, cocoon-like encasings that protect the wearer during their transition from one state of being to another. As in ancient depictions of the Greek God Thanatos, Santín’s references to the pupa and butterfly convey allusions to the soul and to the psyches of his subjects. Their facial expressions, at once placid yet bellicose, seductive yet indifferent, signify the duality of eros and thanatos.
By rendering these isolated figures, as vulnerable as they are provocative, Santín’s paintings embody Jean Paul Sartre’s existential statement that “God is the solitude of man.”
Antonio Santín was born in Madrid, Spain in 1978. He has exhibited internationally and is represented in the collection of the French Ministry of Culture, among numerous private collections worldwide. He was an artist in residence at Kunstlerhaus Glogauer in Berlin, as well as at Centre dárt Contemporani Piramidon in Barcelona. The artist currently lives and works in Berlin.
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Tape Modern is pleased to announce our biggest event to date:
Earthly Delights a group exhibition Opening, Friday September 25th and a big after party for the art fair weekend.
Earthly Delights, Tape Modern No.11
Curated by Anna Erickson
In cooperation with Heidestrasse galleries and Halle am Wasser
Opening: Friday September 25th 6pm-3am
Exhibition duration: Saturday September 26th and Sunday September 27th 11am-6pm.
Location: TAPE, Heidestrasse 14. 10557 BERLIN S-BHF
Featuring the work of 13 artists, Earthly Delights takes its name from Hieronymus Bosch’s iconic painting from 1503, The Garden of Earthly Delights, which depicts across three panels God presenting his creation of Adam and Eve, a bacchanal orgy of humans, hybrid creatures and otherworldly animals and, finally, a hellscape in which eternal suffering and damnation are portrayed in terrifying scenes of torture
and anguish. Considered by many to represent a sequential narrative of mankind’s initial state of purity in Eden, subsequent corruption and ultimate punishment in Hell, Bosch’s work builds on symbolic systems that reference alchemy, astrology, heresy and the recesses of the human psyche to form a complex pantheon of desire and depravity that is consistently acclaimed as one of the most significant artistic
achievements ever created. The painting is viewed as a moral warning against lust and worldly pleasure and has been described as "an erotic derangement that turns us all into voyeurs."
The work presented in Earthly Delights is a contemporary interpretation of the prevailing themes encompassed by Bosch’s masterpiece. The Berlin-based artist duo Awst & Walther invoke original sin with their piece Temptation, while Hannes Bend’s
life-size candy sculpture, a composite of both male and female anatomy, references the hybrid forms rendered in Bosch’s central panel. Torsten Solin’s absurd dream-like landscapes are both sexually provocative and utterly grotesque, while Vincent Wenzel presents Freakfries, a masterpiece large-scale painting depicting the chaos of
the subconscious. John Miserendino creates a modern day and abstracted version of The Triumph of Death from 1562 by Peter Brueghel the Elder which resides in the Prado Museum directly across from The Garden of Earthly Delights. Angela Liosi creates tiny diorama scenes of violence and murder and Antonio Santin and Sophie Reinhold portray the darker side of humanity in their paintings. Kenno Apatrida will produce a performance specifically for the exhibition during the opening on Friday September 25 using death masks and the nude female body in a bacchanalia tribute to Hieronymus Bosch.
The main hall of Tape will be specially transformed into an exhibition space and burlesque club with a bar. In addition to the exhibition there will be a separate party in the club starting at 11pm.
Earthly Delights will feature work from the following artists; Kenno Apatrida , Awst & Walther, Hannes Bend, Amir Fattal, Nir Hod, Filippos Kavakas, Angela Liosi, John Miserendino, Cornelia Renz, Sophie Reinhold, Antonio Santin, Torsten Solin, and Vincent Wenzel.
The exhibition is curated by Anna Erickson, private art dealer living and working in Berlin and New York, former sales director for Gagosian Gallery, New York and former Director of Yvon Lambert, New York. Erickson has a BA in Art History and MA in Art Administration.
