Rafa Silvares
Electric slide, 2023
Painting - Oil on linen
210 x 230 cm (83 x 90 in)
Further images
• Rafa Silvares thematizes the fixtures, appliances and other props of contemporary urban and domestic lives, depicting the inanimate in motion. • The starkness of his industrialized landscapes are rendered...
• Rafa Silvares thematizes the fixtures, appliances and other props of contemporary urban and domestic lives, depicting the inanimate in motion.
• The starkness of his industrialized landscapes are rendered playful and engaging through his vibrant palette and gentle gradients. Industrial textures such as metal and plastic are rounded and soft.
• The artist experiments in reductive geometry and graphic shapes, engaging with seriality as a thread throughout the works.
• The structural and architectural shapes that populate his works are both minimal and abundant, facilitating an exploration of the spatial qualities of the canvas surface.
• In his most recent works (which include Electric slide), Silvares explores the idea that paintings can produce a kind of electricity when polarized forces come into play – such as warm and cold colors, the optical and graphic dimensions, as well as the stark aspect of metallic objects and the sort of velvety, smoky quality of their pictorial rendering.
• He is interested in rendering the world of things, vehicles, and domestic environments in a stylized way, as well as in conveying the impression that they might be enchanted, or possessed by an otherworldly force. He depicts objects that seem to operate independently and continuously.
• This new body of work draws in particular from Mayakovsky’s eponymous tragedy Vladimir Mayakovsky (1913) – also known by its working title “The Riot of things” – in which machines and objects instigate a mutiny against humans. That said, Silvares is more interested in exploring painting itself, its colors, and the phenomenological dimension of the optical plane than establishing specific narratives and meanings for his compositions.
• The starkness of his industrialized landscapes are rendered playful and engaging through his vibrant palette and gentle gradients. Industrial textures such as metal and plastic are rounded and soft.
• The artist experiments in reductive geometry and graphic shapes, engaging with seriality as a thread throughout the works.
• The structural and architectural shapes that populate his works are both minimal and abundant, facilitating an exploration of the spatial qualities of the canvas surface.
• In his most recent works (which include Electric slide), Silvares explores the idea that paintings can produce a kind of electricity when polarized forces come into play – such as warm and cold colors, the optical and graphic dimensions, as well as the stark aspect of metallic objects and the sort of velvety, smoky quality of their pictorial rendering.
• He is interested in rendering the world of things, vehicles, and domestic environments in a stylized way, as well as in conveying the impression that they might be enchanted, or possessed by an otherworldly force. He depicts objects that seem to operate independently and continuously.
• This new body of work draws in particular from Mayakovsky’s eponymous tragedy Vladimir Mayakovsky (1913) – also known by its working title “The Riot of things” – in which machines and objects instigate a mutiny against humans. That said, Silvares is more interested in exploring painting itself, its colors, and the phenomenological dimension of the optical plane than establishing specific narratives and meanings for his compositions.