As we continue checking in around the globe, we want to share the latest opening from our friends at Delimbo Gallery in Sevilla as they open their new space in the beautiful Spanish city. After a 6-year hiatus from exhibiting in his hometown, Delimbo introduced new works by self-taught painter, Matías Sánchez.
Mentiras Piadosas (White Lies) opened back in mid-February, and we had planned to do a little interview with the artist, but after things got seriously complicated in the region we decided to introduce the works in a quarantined gallery. Born in Germany and a resident of Savilla, Sánchez developed a deliberate and recognizable style of heavily textured works jammed with comic figurative elements, painted in raw, expressionist technique. A traffic jam of gestures and thick layers of paint, the artist creates an abstract, imaginary setting through which his characters are introduced.
Whether scribbled as rough doodles, smoothly rendered using oil's flow or almost sculpted from lumps of paint, these grotesque creatures spawn from the constant flow of images, TV, and tabloids. Focusing on their faces and exaggerated expressions rather than showing the whole figure, Sánchez's intense work teems energy. With favorite images like bones, sausages,and rats, or banners strewn with text, the entire body of work feels like the crowded scrapbook of a ferocious universe. —Sasha Bogojev
