Blue Rainbow (2018)
Blue Rainbow
Angell Gallery, Toronto, Canada
4 -27 October 2018
It takes courage to enjoy it
– Björk
Blue is associated with the sky and the sea – vast spaces often used as metaphors for freedom and inspiration, or signifiers of tranquility and calmness. Perhaps this is why Andrew Salgado chose this to characterize his exhibition Blue Rainbow. After years of making work in which the political was very personal, Salgado’s new paintings find him unburdening. “My practice was being weighted down by my own history,” he explains. I just wanted to enjoy this process.”
With the rise of right-wing attitudes in many parts of the world – and the anti-LGBT sentiments that often accompany them – producing positive representations of gay people can itself be Political. Salgado, who has been the target of hate crimes, dealt directly with his experiences throughout his career. But here, “the process, the joy, the colours, the feelings I get … I want those to be enough for me, and I want them to be enough for viewers,” he says. “What others read into the work is just as important as my intentions.”
Salgado’s figures are depicted in a fantastical, often ominous tableaux: a harlequin-like figure (perhaps referencing Picasso) walks amid an indefinable horizon, followed by a silhouetted figure under a heavy moon; an unrecognisable figure sits atop a horse both still before the viewer; a man before a picture window, partially obscured by a field of flowers, gazes wistfully into the distance. Environments that suggest the out-of-doors: quiet moments on azure beaches, walking through a garden or contemplating a cobalt sky at dusk. Serenity, freedom and expansiveness inform the paintings; they serve as meditative yet irreverent rejoinders to the socially and politically proscribed lives that people too often feel hemmed in by. “A line from the Bjork song Big Time Sensuality – really hit me recently,” says Salgado. “I was like: Oh my god, this show is me, learning to enjoy.”