Kendall Art Cultural Center

OPENING: Friday, Feb 7, 2020

6:00PM-11PM

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ATRAMENTUM

Miguel Angel Salvo

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by Camila Luna

Im·mi·grate

verb

To live permanently in a foreign country.

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Art is proof of humanities’ potential for brilliance, confirmation of our budding capability to awe, inspire, move, and transcend. Art makes society, therefor society is influenced by artists. Artists pull inspiration from their lives, the world around them, therefor an artist’s work is an extension of his life, personal life experiences are a reflected within their works. It can be argued that the evolution of artistic style, figures, mediums, experiments within artistic movements are a culmination of intimate moments within the lives of every artist. Many artists have an innate ability to see beyond their generation and understand societal problems within their respective contemporary times. Creating innovative, controversial works that are later on accepted as master pieces. This ability to pinpoint and discuss controversial issues make art a tool in influencing society and causing ripples of change. In many ways’ art and by default artists simultaneously document their lives along with the society they live in while influencing future generations. What inspires and influences them in turn is the world around them and the feelings they experience as they live their lives. The human condition is not a tangible thing, neither are the feelings evoked when looking at a work of art. 

 

An artist’s ability to inspire and document lies in his or her ability to observe, process, categorize, and express his or her views on the world they experience. Immigrating and assimilating into a new environment is one of the many psychologically altering conditions that are as much of a tool as oil and canvas when creating a work of art. Not only an influence for the artist but also a ripple of influence within societal norms, views, and perspectives. The works of art oftentimes become a commentary on life, society, and political situations among others.

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A picture of Salvo would be incomplete without taking account of the experiences he accumulated immigrating from Cuba to Spain, where he began to see other parts of humanity’s history which were seen as taboo within the island. Within his works there is a world within a world. Many scenes come together to create an avalanche of information and stories which invite the audience to take a closer look and explore. At first glance, his works look as though they are simply a collage; however, once there is a closer observation it’s clear that nothing is just simply “beautiful.” Salvo believes that today’s society is submersed within too much information coming from too many dubious channels. His works explore how relative everything is, how fleeting. His work is full of historical images, taken from his relentless exploration of history books. The faces he paints are found in a wide array of historical pages from books about the Holocaust to Soviet magazines full of beautiful women posing in front of cars. He removes the beautiful woman from the glossy pages of a magazine and decontextualizes them by placing them in the middle of a battlefield, hinting to the audience that there should be some mistrust regarding the information given to the population. The beautiful woman beautifies the purchase of a car and softens the war scene. Salvo plays with the images in the same way that the media plays with stories. Salvo becomes a television screen, bombarding the audience with information from the past and present — manipulated and coexisting pictorially within the same space. Every detail is intended to make the audience stop, think, and contemplate creating their own reflection and accounts of what is happening socially to show how values and morals keep changing with the immerse amount of information available. Salvo achieves within his chaos an extraordinary pictorially and aesthetic result.