Art Madrid'23 – Santiago Ydáñez and the heartbreaking beauty

 

 

El Jardín de las Delicias, 2017 (Al fondo)

 

 

Santiago Ydáñez studied Fine Art in Granada and for the last 14 years he has divided his time between Jaén and Berlin. He was born in 1969, in the town of Puente de Génave, Jaén. He was influenced by the contact with earth and the countryside, animals and hunting. These features will create his symbolic world: erothic or forbiden sensuality, huge and strident portraits, “dismemberments” as a type of vanitas, defiant animals close-ups, art history reinterpretation, etc. The axial line of his work rests on the basic, primitive feelings shared by both humans and animals.

 

 

Sin título 2014

 

 

The artist uses photography as source material. Taking it as an starting point, he firstly makes a quick charcoal sketch and then picks up his brushes. He paints swiftly and impulsively, applying energetic, grey and black strokes in a rapid brushwork. These pieces cause different emotions in viewers: pain, pleasure, ecstasy and nostalgia. The artist use different support surfaces: canvases, books or objects he picks up at markets.

 

 

Versión de la obra ¡…Y tenía corazón! / Anatomía del corazón de de Enrique Simonet

 

 

The exhibition features selected paintings from the last decade of his career. Among them, `El Jardín de las Delicias (2017)´, an enormous 315 x 1000 cm canvas, shows the face of a blonde girl whose melancholy gaze speaks of absence, versus the tranquil beauty of a lost paradise. It is a criticism of cultural and ethical decadence that brought Germany to Nazism.
His exploration of the philosophical links between original and copy can be seen in a version painted specifically for CAC Málaga of Enrique Simonet's work ¡… Y tenía corazón! / Anatomía del corazón (1890), now exhibited in the Museo de Málaga, that renders a doctor making an autopsy to a prostitute. Apart from these pieces, we can also find objects such as cutlery boxes, frames, a mirror and jewellery cases, on which he paints or draws the same motifs and characters that appear in his paintings.

 

 

Objeto intervenido

 

 

Ydáñez’s artwork can be admired until the 24th of September in Contemporary Art Centre Málaga, where can be also visited the permanent collection, several summer workshops or Danielle Van Zadelhoff exhibition, dutch photographer.

 

In the year 2020 in the heart of Barcelona a wandering gallery was born, the same one that in February 2021 would debut at Art Madrid with an exhibition proposal focused on contemporary portraits; with this subject matter it would manage to create a powerful dialogue between artwork and audience and make the seal Inéditad remain in the history of the event that contained it.

Jean Carlos Puerto. Protección. Oil and copper leaf on wood. 60 x 48. 2021. Image courtesy of the gallery.

Since that first time and until today, the wandering gallery has managed to build projects on otherness, has repositioned in the spotlight the discourses on the LGTBIQ+ collective, has consolidated a group of artists who share its principles of resilience and empathy and the best thing is that it continues to bet from the professionalism and commitment to give voice to the difference.

Claudio Petit-Laurent.. El Joven de la Perla. Oil on wood. 30 x 30 cm. 2023. Image courtesy of the gallery.

Inéditad Gallery, thanks to its founder Luis López, its collaborators and the infinite possibilities manifested in the works of the artists it represents, is a gallery that has demonstrated its capacity and courage to stimulate the sensibility of the public through art and seduce a generation that moves between the glass window and the analogical story. Inéditad is a nomadic gallery that has gathered around it a community of artists and has moved the context with exhibition projects that think about LGTBIQ+ art without prejudices.

Pepa Salas Vilar. Las marcas del arcoiris. Oil on canvas. 40 x 50 cm. 2022. Image courtesy of the gallery.

Pride and Prejudice was inaugurated. An exhibition that brings together the works of sixteen artists: Abel Carrillo, Alex Domènech, Carlos Enfedaque, Silvia Flechoso, Jamalajama, Daniel Jaén, Claudio Petit-Laurent, Jean Carlos Puerto, Fernando Romero, Pablo Rodríguez, Pepa Salas Vilar, Jack Smith, Pablo Sola, Bran Sólo, Elia Tomás and Utürüo. Painting, illustration, photography and digital art are the manifestations that bring into dialogue around fifty neatly threaded pieces, in a discursive line that discusses such a latent phenomenon as discrimination. To achieve this, the artists invited to the exhibition question themselves whether: Does discrimination exist within the LGTBIQ+ collective?

Pride and Prejudice Official Poster. Image courtesy of the gallery.

With approaches on and from the body, the proposal invites to celebrate diversity, proposes to question and self-question the prejudices and attitudes of society against the collective. Pride and Prejudice is a space for dialogue about the constructs imposed on us by society. It is also an oasis in which to deconstruct with tolerance and respect the subjectivities that sometimes prevent us from approaching the production of the participating artists, simply because "the beautiful" does not fit in an androgynous body. The subjugation of stereotypes are pressed with determination to find the beauty of diversity in other palpable facets of reality.

Pablo Sola. All men are dogs. Photography. 2014. Image courtesy of the gallery.

Throughout these three years Inéditad has stimulated the vindictive projection towards bad practices, has questioned estates around the LGTBIQ+ body and the most admirable thing, is that these capacities have resurfaced around the dialogue and the visual narrative of the stories that are told from the visual: Artworks that are people, art that is, per se, humanity. Overcome impositions and accept what is different in order to continue fighting against homophobia, biphobia, lesbophobia or transphobia and defend the equal rights that all the acronyms of the collective deserve in our community.

That's Pride and Prejudice: One creature, the happiest in the world. And maybe other projects and other people have said it - or felt it - before, but none so fairly.

Silvia Flechoso. Hola, soy maricón. Oil on canvas. 73 x 54 cm. 2023. Image courtesy of the gallery.

From June 8th until June 22nd you can visit Pride and Prejudice. Carrer de Palau núm. 4. Canal Gallery space. Barcelona.