Conceived in dialogue with the architectural and historical specificity of the site, the exhibition introduces a new body of work in which Santiago Evans Canales presents sculpture for the first time, extending his pictorial research into three-dimensional form and marking a significant new direction within his practice.
Phenomenon: Peephole Aesthete
"Enter into an uncanny abandoned house. Inside, the only light you can see in the hallway, is coming out of a door’s diminute peephole. From the outside, only a ray of light is observed refracted on a wall. Curiosity fills the room into finding out what world lurks inside that peephole. In this manner, one approaches and peeks like a good peeping Tom or peeping Tammy, and observes what is behind the portal.
There, an appearance of a shadow with a life of its own is unfolding packed with color. In instances we perceive an apparition of a human inside a flood, grabbing onto a tree thanks to a translucent textile in a not so distant past; in another, we find Dr. Jekyll drinking his potion and Hyde emerging from inside himself; another instant shows Narcissus peeking at herself, in love with her image; a different instance shows a garden with two lovers naked without the collective pressure of wearing their garments. Every appearance and shadow (phenomenon) depends on a conjunct relationship with a body, otherwise the shadow would be free and instead of being that which exists by definition in darkness, it would take protagonism and live by its own accord.
The bodies can be imagined in those phenomenons that Santiago Evans Canales traces in each work. His entangled relationship with the fantasy of the observer and the observed permeates the totality of his tales and creates in each work rhizomatic perspectives that can be appreciated from every angle. Evans Canales, the aesthete, just like Rodin makes us obsess about the game between light and shadow, and from the affective makes us interact with that which is not immediate, provoking us with his satire and beautiful perspective much like a playful faun would in the shadows of the forest."
- Nicklas Quirós