Santiago Parra: UNCONSCIOUS LANGUAGE

San Diego, California – Madison Gallery is proud to announce Colombian artist Santiago Parra’s return to Madison Gallery for his 2nd solo exhibition after a complete sell-out show in the Spring of 2020.

Santiago Parra is known for his large, abstract, and highly expressive black and white paintings. His canvases capture the suspended flatness of the calligraphy-like imagery, harmonizing two seemingly incompatible aesthetic moments, spontaneity and pondering, which are all shaped by movement, strength, gravity, and skill of the Columbian artist’s creative process. He explores the expressive possibilities of the quintessential abstract form. With an audacious manner, he redefines abstract structures with bold sculptural brushstrokes. His work is both an aesthetic exploration and a questioning of the essence of abstract image-making. Parra’s work is the embodiment of automatism, the method of art-making in which the artist suppresses conscious control over the making process. Automatism was developed by Surrealists with the ultimate goal to express one’s inner world in the purest most accurate way, without the control or judgment of social pressures exerted by consciousness. An interesting quality to this way of working is that the paintings are direct unfiltered reflections of Parra’s personal resonance within them.

“Conceptually I am looking at them [the blank canvas and black paint] as radiographs of my inner self, pictures of my life’s pulsion’s, the images of my inner energy, what constitutes me being alive.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the nature of my work, it is not something new but rather a recurring theme. It’s difficult in my case as all my work is rooted in non-rational procedures, by essence it is impossible to have a direct observation of what goes on in each painting. It is like waking up and trying to remember what the dream was but even here it is much more difficult. I constantly try every time I paint to be absolutely focused on what is going on but just before I begin, I enter a sort of unconscious trance, during those seconds the canvas is painted. When I come back into consciousness, I lift the brush and the painting is finished. What is the resulting image? Through all this year I’ve learned to identify when a painting is just a senseless scribble and when it carries meaning. It is usually decided beforehand, that’s why I only paint when I feel I have something to say, it is not just about creating a pretty picture it is about unearthing what lays deep in my soul. These paintings constitute an unconscious language, spoken words from the other side of consciousness.”

– Santiago Parra

Shaped by movement, strength, gravity, complete unpredictability, and the uniqueness of Santiago Parra’s approach to abstraction, his works are an exploration of the expressive possibilities of the quintessential abstract form. Soft and light or explosive with intention Santiago’s work immortalizes personal history in paint, a moment in time captured through a stream of consciousness.

Santiago Parra is in the collections of the Perez Art Museum Miami (PAMM), Miami, USA, Jorge Peŕ ez Collection, USA, Jean et Colette Cherqui Collection, France, Tanya C. Brillembourg Collection, USA, Solita Mishaan Collection, Spain, Cesar Gaviria Collection, Colombia, Kehinde Wiley Collection, USA, and Collection Lazaro, Spain.