The houses are haunted
By white night-gowns.
None are green,
Or purple with green rings,
Or green with yellow rings,
Or yellow with blue rings.
None of them are strange,
With socks of lace
And beaded ceintures.
People are not going
To dream of baboons and periwinkles.
Only, here and there, an old sailor,
Drunk and asleep in his boots,
Catches tigers
In red weather.
-Wallace Stevens
PIERMARQ* is pleased to present Good Things, an exhibition of new work by Andrew Salgado. This is Salgado’s first exhibition at PIERMARQ* in Sydney.
The exhibition earns its title from the amalgam of paintings, music, literature, poetry and ideas that coalesce to form Salgado’s unique visual language. Heavily layered with inspiration from art, travel and the artist’s signature impasto, each work is a tapestry of references, symbols and personal insights. The thick, tactile application of vibrant oil paint gives the work texture and depth, and the complexity of the composition achieves a dynamic energy on canvas.
Akin to Stevens’ poem, ‘Disillusionment of Ten O’Clock’, the new body of work captures the ordinary or uninspired domestic moments, imbued with a dreamlike, imaginative use of colour and exotic elements, creating a fantastical escape into the artist’s inner world. The works are united by a fixation on the figure and its relationship to the home, capturing quiet, dark and intimate moments, peering into spaces from the outside, or toward green spaces through a window from within. One particular work, View From Our House, borrows its title from Roxette’s ghostly, romantic 1980’s hit, ‘View from a Hill’. The painting depicts a man with an intense outward stare, while an obscured figure outside the picture plane looks in on him from above. Similarly enigmatic, Boy Ghost, features a young child playing with a cloth, an act that becomes elevated and haunting in its eerie simplicity. Rich with influences, Salgado leaves the narrative mysteriously open for the viewer to glean their own interpretation.
Andrew Salgado is a Canadian painter living and working in London. His powerful, figurative work interweaves a vivid combination of patterns and colours. Salgado graduated with an MA in Fine Art from Chelsea College of Art in 2009. Since 2010, he has had over 15 sold-out international solo exhibitions including London, New York, Toronto, Miami, Tokyo and Basel.
