Memoria Paolo Salvador

Paolo Salvador

Memoria

April 26 – June 8, 2024

Opening Friday, April 26, 6–9PM

Peres Projects is pleased to present Memoria, Paolo Salvador’s (b. 1990 in Lima, PE) fifth solo exhibition with the gallery and his third at the Berlin space.

Paolo Salvador’s new works tell stories of circulation, transformation, and convergence. His expansive landscapes, populated with voyagers and a diverse bestiary, embark the viewer on a journey that extends far beyond any individual’s orientation in time and space. Although informed by the artist’s own biographical trajectory, it embraces various timescales and geographies. In several instances throughout the exhibition, Salvador’s characteristic metaphysical backgrounds, in which overlapping planes of color create multiple horizons suggestive of the multiple dimensions of existence, develop into seascapes. Reminiscent of the coastline of his hometown of Lima, they also gesture to mythological odysseys, and historical and contemporary narratives of migration.

Themes of displacement and belonging are salient in Migratio (all works 2024), in which a human figure, riding a feline form, is captured in the act of planting a sinewy branch in the ground; a gesture that encapsulates the decisive and conclusive moment of a quest for a place to put down roots. The scene evokes a radicant—a vegetal organism that grows roots from the stem as it progresses across space. Introduced into contemporary art criticism by curator and art critic Nicolas Bourriaud, the radicant metaphor finds echoes in Salvador’s practice itself. Indeed, it describes artistic practices that take roots in heterogenous contexts and operate through nomadic forms and processes of transfer, translation, and hybridization. Carving singular pathways through time and space, Salvador’s paintings dissolve linear and flat perspectives in favor of multilayered and multidirectional ones, rendered by his virtuosic use of colors, lines, and planes. Inspired by disparate sources such as Andean cosmology and culture and the canon of Western art, the works speak simultaneously to Salvador’s diasporic experience, the tangling of cultures that make up present-day Peru, and the arts made in today’s global context.

From one body of work to another, Salvador navigates his deliberately reduced yet always morphing visual lexicon in a cyclical way. Throughout Memoria, he revisits motifs found in works dating back a few years. While referencing Indigenous myths, traditions, and craftsmanship, Salvador infuses each motif with new meanings, thus weaving polysemous narratives ripe with both personal and universal resonances. Through appropriation and reformulation, Salvador’s practice resonates with syncretic processes that have shaped Peru’s culture since the Spanish presence in the region. Moreover, it conveys the artist’s long-standing reflection on the way certain motifs circulate across time and geography. Indeed, besides reflecting Salvador’s heritage, this approach is ingrained in an epistemological interest in tracing the origins of things—be they motifs, symbols, or traditions—and identifying convergence points where they fuse and give rise to new ideas and forms.

Salvador’s depictions of figures in metamorphosis or transition embody his meditation on fleeting states of consciousness. His lush brushwork and dreamlike palettes express rhythms and flows that conjure the continuous development of ecological, social, and cultural systems. Balanced and harmonious, the works represent forms of mutualism between all living beings. Besides Salvador’s distinctive interspecies pairings, works such as Otra mañana de Abril feature human figures engaged in various activitie in tandem, symbolizing connectedness and companionship. Ultimately, Memoria maps interconnected paths along which memory appears as a profound understanding of the past essential for navigating the present.

— Claire Ducresson-Boët

This is Paolo Salvador’s fifth solo exhibition with the gallery and his third at the Berlin space. His recent solo exhibitions include Misterios inscritos en tela, Peres Projects, Seoul (2023); Silencios entre el mar, los ríos y montañas, Goodman Gallery, London (2023); Los últimos días del gato de fuego, Peres Projects, Milan (2022); Ensueños en el amanecer, Ilwoo Space, Seoul (2021); Nuevas Mitologias, Patricia Low Contemporary, Gstaad (2021); and Resonancias oníricas, Peres Projects, Berlin (2021). He has participated in a number of group exhibitions including The New, New, Peres Projects, Seoul (2023); Futurismo, Mendes Wood DM, São Paulo (2022); Heroic Bodies, the Rudolph Tegners Museum, Dronningmølle (2022); Les Yeux Clos, Perrotin, Paris (2021); and The Nomenclature of Colours, Slade Research Centre, London (2019).