Nacho Martín Silva

Madrid, Spain

Bio

Nacho Martín Silva has a degree in Fine Arts by the Complutense University of Madrid. Among his recent projects are Historia pintada de la historia de la Historia at CAB, Burgos, in 2024, Paraísos de Papel at Max Estrella Gallery in Madrid, Extraño Paraíso at El Apartamento Gallery in La Habana in 2023, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, showed by El Apartamento gallery at Liste Art Fair Basel in 2022 or Piece of Trash at Fundación Miró in Palma in 2019 among others.

Statement

The way Nacho Martín Silva approaches painting constitutes a stance in itself. It is a song to freedom and a call to distrust. Everything that presents itself as beyond doubt should, at the very least, arouse suspicion in us. Any attempt to homogenize identities must encounter resistance. These two ideas, which when read here may seem almost pamphleteering, in Martín Silva’s artistic practice move close to the ground, appearing and disappearing within the framework constructed by his painting.

“Martín Silva neither illustrates ideas nor has he devoted himself to ‘portraying’ catastrophes with morbid, iconoclastic delectation. His arguments stem from the problematization of images through their heterogeneous and ever-changing treatment (different codes, painting in transit), from rejecting what appears evident before the viewer’s eyes, from restructuring the logical order of images, and from the disintegration of their elements. Of course, all of this could have been done digitally, but then one might ask whether we are still capable of perceiving the qualitative difference involved in confronting a mental process whose tangible materialization says as much as, or more than, its iconic dimension.”

This excerpt from the critique written by Víctor Zarza on Carcoma en la madera, the painter’s solo exhibition at the Max Estrella gallery, clearly underscores the artist’s concerns.

Limited Edition Prints

Curatorial Note

In Paul Henderson’s work, the line between image and abstraction is always unsettled. His collages hold together bodies and fragments that shouldn’t belong to the same world. Figures emerge from the cuts only to dissolve again into pattern, texture, or void. The result is a strange equilibrium: order built from rupture. Henderson uses cutting as a way to measure the distance between recognition and distortion. His fragments often retain traces of their origin—hands, faces, symbols—but they no longer obey the logic that once defined them. Connections appear abrupt, even violent, as if the act of joining carried a quiet aggression. Beneath the surface, a tension hums between beauty and fracture. What looks precise is never stable. The more the pieces fit, the more their seams reveal themselves. Henderson’s collages remind us that every image contains its own undoing, that what seems coherent is often stitched from conflict.

Original Artworks

In the artist's own words

"Part of the Heroes & Leaders series working on reproductions of these classical portraits of kings and princes from art history textbooks. The Blues Singer attempts to draw a line from European colonial history and aristocracy to American popular music appropriation."

P.H.

In the artist's own words

Part of the Heroes&Leaders series working on reproductions of classical portraits of kings and princes from art history textbooks. The title comes from a small piece of a No Frills flyer (a discount grocery store in Canada) in the collage. It's a simple work that came together quickly. A portrait of a dandy. Like a lot of artists, I became quite interested in the various meanings and ways that masks could work during the pandemic.

P.H.

Phantom Tigers and Parallel Papers artists

Alma Haser

Andrea Burgay

Jack Felice

Mark Wagner

Miko Hornborg

Paul Henderson

Susana Blasco

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"I like to suspend that moment of legibility in an image. Because that’s the moment when the image is just an image and no longer a transparent conduit to something else."

John Stezaker
In conversation with
Immi at Knotnorious
2016