Embouteillage by Saul Sanchez

A series of miniature paintings has been created on a set of several soda caps. The paintings reproduce different shots of urban landscapes using a detailed and sharp technique that approaches photorealism (in fact, the paintings are based on photographs). Each cap is placed independently on a large surface, becoming a marked point, a striking element within an otherwise homogeneous whole.

Soda caps are a common part of trash and waste, just another element within the random grammar of decay and industrial waste; small objects that, when piled up, form large clusters that become visible. Trash, in turn, is an increasingly prevalent part of the urban landscape, a sludge that grows and invades streets, sidewalks, vacant lots, and dump sites. On the other hand, when we think of landscapes, we immediately associate them with the notion of expansiveness: a general view, an open plane, a whole captured in a frame. This genre of painting is, one might say, elusive to the miniature. However, the landscape seems today to want to miniaturize itself, to camouflage in small mirrors, tiny canvases, milk cartons, labels of natural products, and other supports of limited dimension, as if it sought to tactically allude to the obsolescence of a traditional genre of artistic expression.

With the integration of these two references, this work builds a metaphor that is not far from fractality: the tiny part (the cap) reproduces the characteristics of the larger whole to which it belongs (the urban landscape), making it self-similar. At the same time, the use of traditional painting technique appears either as a naïve play with the popular art found on the streets, relegated as the detritus of plastic production, or as the inferior, manufactured twin of the industrial printing of images on the smallest advertising supports; an unusual prize, an unbelievable promotion that no bottling company could offer us.

Text  by Juan Alberto Conde.