Gabriel Salgado

I deal with color systems and color compositions. In my painting, I often concentrate on a basic geometric shape such as a triangle or a circle. Repetition and variation combine this shape into an entire area in which color harmonies and dissonances have equal importance. However, the image compositions are not created according to strict rules or formulas, but rather are characterized by an intuitive and free approach. The application of paint is even and opaque and yet you can see the painterly gesture in the structure of the surfaces.

The choice of image carrier is of particular importance in my work, as it lends the works a humorous component and is able to break with a purely concrete painting. For example, I use tree slices as a painting surface that are reminiscent of rural or alpine gastronomy with their naturally romantic breakfast platters.

In a recent work I built a stork's nest based on the original blueprints of an organization for nesting aids. The pasture rods from which the side walls of the nest are woven became the painting ground to which I applied eleven different colors. Through the intervention and modification, the stork nest oscillates between a functional, decorated object of use and a purely formal, ...