A collection of fourteen monochromatic canvases depict abstract forms through an intuitive combination of mark-making, gesture, and restrained douses of paint. From mottled, liquid channels to plump, controlled strokes, the paintings were directly inspired by the work of Jackson Pollock after a visit to the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice.
We attended the opening of Columbian artist Santiago Parra’s fifth solo exhibition, Spark of Fire, at JD Malat and asked the audience, “what’s your hot take?”
HOT TAKE 1: I like it a lot. I like the colour scheme…and I like the rawness of it.
HOT TAKE 2: Sometimes I feel like art can be very serious, probably too serious. This is a bit more like, okay let’s go, let’s just let it all go, you know?
HOT TAKE 3: Chaotic emotion. Like something dark, deep inside trying to come out.
HOT TAKE 4: It reminds me of sometimes when you sit with yourself and start to go into your own head, and all your thoughts are so muddled. There are splashes and brightness, but at the same time also darkness within us. And it’s like, you can lose your inner self in that situation. I feel like this is how that looks.
HOT TAKE 5: It feels like it’s just everywhere, like not in any kind of form or direction. For me that’s the starting point. I’m an interior designer, so I’m watching out for the kinds of things I can recognise, like pattern, light, texture, scale…for instance the smaller ones, they will not have as much impact. It’s because the scale is so [huge on the larger ones] that when you’re standing in front of it, it consumes you and draws you in.
I like scale because I’m quite tall, so something bigger than me fascinates me.
HOT TAKE 6: I always like to try and imagine the artworks in my house, and I decided that some of these would work and some of them would definitely not. For instance, these larger, sort of speckled pieces, the ones that are really dramatic; they’re not exactly going to fit with my vintage blossom wallpaper and velvet curtains, are they? The smaller, more graphic ones, however, I think that would actually really work.
HOT TAKE 7: It kind has that look, like a contemporary abstract painting that’s expensive, like high-art looking.
HOT TAKE 8: I kind of get the sense of complete spontaneity, which is funny because the artist said that he is actually very rational, very organised. It seems like the paintings portray the opposite of who he is in the day-to-day, the character that the world sees. Maybe this is an outlet for that opposing energy.
HOT TAKE 9: I’m really intrigued by this marble dust that keeps recurring inside the black. You know the blackest black? It’s like the opposite of that. Whereas that black is meant to absorb light and not show texture, this is like black that reveals every last grain of texture or particle of light. Especially some of those shinier bits. I love that, because it really challenges in a way what black even is. We think of it as a dark obscuring colour that covers things, or not as a colour at all, but here it really stands on its own.
HOT TAKE 10: I really admire his process. He lives on a farm in Bogota and makes his own brushes out of his horse’s hair. It’s fascinating. That kind of interconnectedness with his materials really comes across. You can see material relationships on the canvases.
HOT TAKE 11: I found it explosive and dynamic, which I like.
HOT TAKE 12: Even though it’s black and white, it feels really rich and chromatic somehow. I usually love colour so much, but here I do not miss the colour at all.
HOT TAKE 13: I miss the colour, but I do feel like it has more colour than would appear at first glance. For instance, the black isn’t really a black black, and almost looks like blue or indigo. I imagine in different light it could change a lot too, which makes it feel really engaging, like it’s alive or something. I kind of like how there’s more to it than meets the eye, because those are always the kinds of works I can come back to again and again, or stare at for a long time.
HOT TAKE 14: I find the black and white to be kind of romantic. I think it lets you use your imagination, because with colours it’s a bit less open-ended, what the story is and what it represents. I love the creaminess of the white – it’s not really white, actually, and makes it feel really raw and electric, like live wires or something that is exposed and very powerful.
HOT TAKE 15: I’m really into that texture inside the colours, the one that’s so shiny. It’s kind of like 3D almost, really gives it a whole other level of depth and dimension that I love.
On view through 6 April at JD Malat
30 Davies Street
London, W1K 4NB
more info here
