Zona Maco (2019)

Zona Maco
Mexico City
6-10 February 2019

Andrew Salgado’s paintings have evolved greatly in style since first rising to prominence over half a decade ago with his (then) signature large-scale, painterly portraits, where large swathes of colour played across the surface to define his subjects. In his most recent work – the representational has given way to the more abstract: and now such colourful, symbolic, and compositional elements are the driving force of the painted image.

Salgado’s most recent works reference the very act of painting with the artist’s wry sense of humor and self-awareness: Contemporary Pleasure Island Time Wasters pulls its title from (the ‘Before and After’ category of the) popular gameshow Jeopardy! – suggesting the artist’s desire to shirk autobiography for the non-sequitur. The artist’s long-standing tendency to paint clowns and the absurd remain constant (in 2016’s The Fool Makes a Joke at Midnight, the artist had actual circus performers in the exhibition space during the exhibition’s duration), and again one sees faces are painted in bright orange, with purple noses and vibrantly coloured hair. Where there once was a plain background, which placed the figure at the forefront of the image, now there is a kind of harmonious cacophony, a medley of pop-coloured squiggles, harlequin patterns, and wonky block shapes–all of which may seem hastily scribbled if it weren’t for the fact that they slot into one another like an impossibly orchestrated puzzle.