”My work deals with a double conceptual origin, the mystical and the concrete, and this dichotomy evolves between the spiritual search for a transcendental experience and the desire to emphasize the material presence as a concrete reality and not as an illusion”.

Fernando Daza (Seville, 1979), presents his latest creations in Art madrid, two diptychs and two individual works in square format, as well as some works made with medium format comic strips.

The Sevillian artist has participated in numerous individual and collective exhibitions in Madrid, Girona, Cadiz, Lisbon, Sardinia and Belgrade, and his work is present in public and private collections around the world, including the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Skopje and the National Art Gallery of Kosovo.

Fernando Daza

Círculo rojo, 2019

Paper cut by hand and glued on fabric

100 x 100cm

Fernando Daza

Círculo multicromático, 2019

Paper cut by hand and glued on fabric

100 x 100cm

Soraya Cartategui Gallery presents your work in Art for the second year in a row, what do you expect from this edition of the Fair, how do you think your work fits in Art Madrid?

In this occasion, the fair also celebrates the fifteenth anniversary of its foundation, I hope that all the expectations of diffusion and sale of the best contemporary art will be fulfilled. This fair has always been an excellent showcase for the work of the most outstanding artists on the current national and international art scene. Of course, the scenario offered by the city of Madrid and the fabulous glass hall of the CentroCentro Cibeles building is unbeatable for hosting one of the most relevant artistic events of the year in Spain.

From the beginning, I believe that this fair has managed to preserve its open, dynamic and avant-garde character. I also believe that it is a very lively fair, with a large attendance of public and especially of collectors, with very colorful and large format works. I think that because of these characteristics my work adapts quite well to the philosophy of the fair. In fact, in the last edition, my work debuted in this fair with Soraya's gallery and was very well received. I was very satisfied with my participation and I am sure I will be for this edition.

What artworks by Fernando Daza we will see in this edition of Art Madrid?

As a novelty, in this edition, I will present two diptychs and two individual works of square format. One of the diptychs is very powerful because of the oranges in the paper I have used, it is about two opposite curved forms on raw linen cloth. The other is a double composition of inverse black and white forms on a background, also inverse, in black and white. And the ones with a square support are two geometric compositions, one in the form of a cross and the other square on a background of indigo blue paper. You can also see in the stand some works made with torn comic paper in medium format, also square.

Fernando Daza

Monocromo beige 2, 2018

Paper cut with cutter and glued on wood

50 x 38cm

The delicacy with which you work the paper and the careful editing you prepare for your works is admirable, can you tell us in general terms what your method of working is, what the creative process is like before arriving at the final piece?

In my work, I use paper torn by hand into strips, which I later accumulate in an orderly manner and paste on the canvas, following a compositional scheme that I previously draw in pencil on the support. It is a work made in canvas on a frame, a two-dimensional support traditionally used for painting, although its character is clearly three-dimensional due to the disposition of the strips of paper; these are folded in half lengthwise and glued on the canvas on one of its sides, leaving the other side raised, slightly separated from the surface of the canvas. This method of adhering the paper to the canvas provides a raised and uneven plane. By means of a zenithal light projection, natural or artificial, we obtain a soft contrast between lights and shadows, which results in a rich and vibrant surface of visual textures. This is the most relevant formal feature of my plastic work and the distinctive feature that best characterizes it.

The origin of this creative technique came after a long period of research after I finished my degree in Fine Arts at the University of Seville. My last year of my degree I studied with an Erasmus grant at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Athens. There I started making some works with collages. The scholarship allowed us to spend the night in schools attached to the Faculty in many of the Aegean islands. We spent some time creating in these annexed schools, and since it was impossible to transport materials such as canvases, frames and paintings, I only carried a folder with papers, watercolors, inks and glue. It was here, in Greece, that my interest in collage and creation with paper began. When I returned to Spain, I wanted to continue my research in this field because I thought it was a technique that could be new compared to traditional painting techniques.

I became aware at that time of the possibilities that used paper could offer me as the main material for the creation of artworks in substitution of painting.

Fernando Daza

At that time, after finishing my studies in Fine Arts, my two older brothers, lawyers, inherited an agency that was owned by my father. One day I went to help them throw away a pile of boxes full of papers and old documents and I realized at that moment that I could use those papers for my creations. I took the boxes home and began a period of research over several years from which I obtained very fruitful results. I found several ways to accumulate the paper and create three-dimensional compositions. As time went by, I bought coloured drawing and engraving papers.

In general, your works are monochrome or bichrome, does this simplification of color have any special meaning?

My work has a double conceptual origin, the mystical and the concrete, and this dichotomy evolves between the spiritual search for a transcendental experience and the desire to emphasize the material presence as a concrete reality and not as an illusion. My compositions basically suggest approaches of suprematist origin; the search for pure sensibility through the predominance of nothingness and the representation of a universe without objects; orthogonal abstract structures, fundamental geometrical forms such as the square and the circle or simply monochrome backgrounds lacking figures. In this way, I intend to show states of maximum order with the minimum means and minimum complexity of elements and to pay more attention to the whole work than to the relationships between the singular parts.

Due to its apparent simplicity, I believe that my work hides an enigmatic presence that seems to resist interpretation and transmits spatiality and idealism to the viewer. The finishes and the material play a fundamental role in the search for balance and beauty, always in accordance with the moderation and placidity transmitted by the canvas of the support; of cotton or linen, raw and without primer. In the works where I use two colours, the chromatic contrast provides a mixed language result where the calm and subtlety of the light colours are broken by the vigour, power and firmness of the black, yellow, red and dark grey. This idea of contrariness and complementarity between opposites or inverses in the diptych works is very interesting to me because I think it harmonizes the composition.

Fernando Daza

Estructura negra sobre fondo blanco, 2018

Díptico. Papel cortado a mano y pegado sobre tela

100 x 130cm

As an artist, what do you feel committed to?

Mainly I feel committed to the idea of making an artistic work not only coherent with my needs and creative interests, but also with the moment I have to live. In my particular case, and I think I could say that the same thing happens to all my professional colleagues, there is an impulse and a permanent need to create, which are also basic and primary, that goes back, according to my conscience, to my earliest childhood, to the very origin of the use of reason. Parallel to this need, the resistance to devote myself to other professional tasks that had nothing to do with artistic practice was born and strengthened. For this reason I have focused on following this path, despite the many difficulties encountered against me. But it's such a gratification to be able to dedicate yourself to what you believe in and love that it's worth it just for that. In this sense, I could say that the first commitment is to myself.

The gallery Soraya Cartategui, based in Madrid and New York, participates once again, within the general program of Art Madrid, with a selection of works from the most recent work of the artists from Seville: Isabelita Valdecasas and Fernando Daza and the Thai artist Chamnan Chongpaiboon

The work of Iyán Castaño (Oviedo, 1996) is situated within a genealogy of contemporary art that interrogates the tension between the ephemeral and the permanent, placing artistic practice on a threshold where nature, time, and perception converge. His research begins with an apparently minor geomorphological phenomenon—the traces left in the sand by the action of the tides—and transforms it into a poetic device for sensitive observation of the landscape. The temporal restriction imposed by low tide functions not only as a technical constraint but also as a conceptual structure that organizes the creative process and aligns it with an ethic of radical attention and presence.

Far from approaching the landscape as a mere backdrop or stage, Castaño recognizes in the maritime environment a generative system that precedes all human intervention. The sea, wind, and light produce autonomous records that he translates pictorially, shifting authorship toward a practice of listening and mediation.

The territory—initially asturian and progressively extended to other geographical contexts—functions as a material archive and situated memory. Each work becomes an unrepeatable index of a specific place and moment, revealing the fragility of natural cycles without resorting to explicit rhetoric of denunciation. In this way, Iyán Castaño’s painting operates as an active pause, a gesture of suspension that allows us to experience the world’s constant transformation from a sensitive and reflective proximity.

Open waters. 14-04-24. Expanded graphic on canvas. 2024. Detail.

In your practice, you work under the time constraint imposed by low tide. How does this temporal limit shape your creative process?

Low tide profoundly conditions my working method, but it does not function merely as a time limit; rather, it is the axis around which the entire project is structured. There is a prior phase in which I study meteorological conditions and the possible climatic variations of a specific day; based on this, I know whether I will be able to work and with which materials.

Once on the beach, during low tide, I have a very limited window—sometimes barely two hours or even less—in which I must move through the space searching for existing traces. If I find one, I intervene in it; if not, I must move on to another beach. After the intervention, I have to remove it quickly before the sea returns and erases every trace. In a way, these works transform the ripples of sand—those forms that are essentially ephemeral—into something permanent.

Where the sea is born. 15-09-25. Expanded graphic on canvas. 40 x 60 cm. Rodiles Beach, Asturias. 2025.

How does the meteorological and maritime environment—the unpredictability of the sea, wind, light, and tide—become a co-author of your pieces?

I do not consider the environment a co-author in the traditional sense, but rather the true author of the traces I work with. I am interested in understanding nature as a great creator: through tides, waves, wind, and light, the sand generates forms that are in constant regeneration. In order to create my works, the sea must first have created its own.

From there, using acrylics, oils, waxes, or sprays, I attempt to translate into the work my sensations and emotions in front of the sea at that specific moment. Whether it is winter or summer, cloudy or sunny, a small cove or an expansive beach, all of these context conditions result and become imprinted in the work.

Sand Ripples. 07-04-21. Expanded graphic on canvas. 189 x 140 cm. Niembro Estuary. Asturias. 2021.

Your work is closely tied to the Asturian territory—beaches, coastal forests, the cove of La Cóndia. What role do place, topography, local identity, and geographic memory play in your practice?

Place is everything in my project. Asturias was the point of departure and the territory where my gaze was formed. I have been working along this line for seven years, and over time I have come to understand that each trace is inseparable from the specific site and the exact day on which it is produced.

From there, I felt the need to expand the map and begin working in other territories. So far, I have developed works in Senegal, Ecuador, the Galápagos Islands, Indonesia, and elsewhere—and in each case, the result is completely different. The sea that bathes those coasts, the arrangement of the rocks, the morphology of the beach, or even the animals that inhabit it generate unique traces, impossible to reproduce elsewhere. This specificity of territory—its topography and geographic memory—is inscribed in each work in a singular, inseparable, and unrepeatable way.

Mangata. 05-11-25. Expanded graphic on canvas. 190 x 130 cm. Sorraos Beach. Llanes. 2025.

To what extent are climate change, rising sea levels, altered tidal cycles, or coastal erosion present—or potentially present—as an underlying reflection in your work?

My work does not originate from an ecological intention or a direct form of protest. If there is a reflection on the environment, it emerges indirectly, by bringing people closer to the landscape, inviting them to observe attentively and to develop a more empathetic relationship with the environment they inhabit. Beaches are in constant transformation, but I do not seek to fix the landscape; rather, I attempt to convey the experience of being in front of it. In this sense, each work is like a small sea that one can take home.

Tree of Life. 19-02-25. Expanded graphic on canvas. 50 x 70 cm. El Puntal Beach. Asturias. 2025.

To what extent do you plan your work, and how much space do you leave for the unexpected—or even for mistakes?

In my work there is very little planning in terms of the final result, but there is a very precise preliminary planning. Before going to the beach, I monitor the time of low tide, wave height, wind, and weather conditions; based on this, I decide which beach to go to. Even so, when I arrive, I still do not know what work I am going to make. It is there that I determine which material to use, which color to apply, and where the intervention will take place. Many times, the environment simply does not allow work on that day, and chance becomes an essential element of these works. Error, in turn, becomes a new possibility if one learns how to work with it.