This year, Juan Silió gallery maintains the solo-project model at Artesantander and dedicates its stand to the artist FOD -Francisco Olivares Díaz- (Puerto Lumbreras, Murcia, 1973).
In his creative process, FOD works with geometry and investigates the synthesis of forms in space. He is continually making a conceptual journey that crosses painting, sculpture and architecture in both directions, supported by a certain degree of pictorial illusionism.
In this set of planes, where chromatic and tonal variations play a fundamental role, the perspectives cover the linen surface or are also embodied in the iron sculptures, where the planes are folded, juxtaposing layers in both cases. This generates a dialectic of construction-deconstruction that allows us to imagine these convertible structures as nomadic and portable, foldable habitats ready to be transported when necessary and to be able to migrate accompanied by a space of their own. The iron sculptures would be the implementation of the assembly of these planes unfolding in space and generating real three-dimensionality, which is paradoxical because of the materia.
Construction is something inherent to human beings who need to delimit a place, to shelter, protect and inhabit it. This idea is always present in the work of the artist who delimits space and plays with the third dimension, whether as a recreation of perspectives in the plane of painting or with real volumes in sculpture, but always with the horizon of architecture present.
FOD finds inspiration in all those temporary or transitory constructions that range from the improvised huts – with their infinite typologies according to function or cultural and geographical context – to the increasingly “sophisticated” ephemeral cardboard constructions that we find in the streets of our cities acting as homes for those who have none. The housing problem is becoming more and more serious, generating a diversification of strategies to the point of the bizarre in order to find a roof over one’s head.
And beyond the purely plastic games of geometric abstraction, the concepts alluded to in the title, Folds and convertibles, evoke the capacity for adaptability, a convenient aspect in a world that can only be understood as changing and unpredictable. It could be said that in these times we also inhabit virtually, as we live in the networks and the cloud as much as in physical spaces, but as long as we maintain that first home that is the body, we will continue to invent habitats that provide us, in whatever form, with a place to shelter us
FOD -Francisco Olivares Díaz- (Puerto Lumbreras in 1973) lives and works in Madrid.
He holds a degree in Fine Arts from the University of Granada. His work, in which he revisits the aesthetic principles of the Bauhaus, explores the relationship between space, support and colour, evolving from essential references in construction-deconstruction-destruction, such as Gordon Matta Clarck or Imi Knoebel. The aesthetics of cities and their architectural projection are turning points in his work.
Since his first exhibitions in the Spanish galleries T20, Ad Hoc and the Brazilian Ybakatu, he has carried out projects in La Conservera (Murcia), in the Sala Verónicas and in Tabacalera in Madrid, as well as for Next art Fair Chicago (solo project with T20), participating in various exhibitions in Casa Encendida (Madrid), Scan Proyect (London) and in various galleries in Spain. His presence is constant since 2003 in fairs and biennials, such as ARCO, Manifesta 8, Artissima, Maco, SP Arte or Volta (NY and Basel).
ARTESANTANDER 2024
BOOTH 21
FOD
PLIEGUES Y CONVERTIBLES
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