The central axis of Santiago Talavera’s work is the reflection on the human condition through the investigation of landscape and its symbolic, narrative and spatial possibilities. The absence of the human being in his works, in combination with an intimate and absurd atmosphere in which past and future seem to intermingle, accentuate the need to think about the place we occupy, rather than as mere observers.
Through drawing, painting or video, Santiago Talavera prefigures and reconstructs space by investigating the imaginative possibilities of nature. His scenes seem to form a fragmented story where the newly occurring and the imminent open paths to speculation, and in which conflicts arising from the relationship between culture and nature are filtered.
In this direction, his work leaves traces of a landscape permeable to openly political issues of a collective nature that transcend personal domains. Hauntopolis, his current project that will be released in 2020, recovers the utopian tradition in a personal interpretation of how to address the disappointment of a cultural present that folds over itself.
Bachelor of Fine Arts at UCM in Madrid, with a last year at the Camberwell College of Arts in London, his work has been exhibited individually and collectively in various institutions, including Sala Amós Salvador, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo Gas Natural Fenosa, La Casa Encendida and Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando in Madrid, Chicago’s Instituto Cervantes, Berlin Freires Museum, and art fairs like UVNT, Drawing Room, FNB Joburg Art Fair Sudáfrica or Pinta London.
Among his individual exhibitions are notable El pasado habrá sido un planeta extraño in Gabinete de dibujos, that won the Best exhibition prize at the Abierto Valencia 2021, Conmigo llevo todas las cosas (La New Gallery, 2013) and Que el destino de las cosas se decida en lugares pequeños ( Blanca Soto Arte Gallery, 2009). His multiple group exhibitions include Cuidado y peligro de sí (Sala Amós Salvador, 2021), Animalista (La Casa Encendida, 2016), XII Mostra Internacional de arte Gas Natural Fenosa (Museo de arte contemporáneo de A Coruña, 2012), Otras tauromaquias (Calcografía Nacional de la Real Academia de San Fernando, 2016), or Nulla dies sine linea (Instituto Cervantes Chicago / Freies Museum Berlín & Sangsang Madang Gallery Seúl).
His work is present in both private and institutional collections, including MAC (Museo de arte contemporáneo de A Coruña), Colección SOLO, Jardin Rouge Montresso Art Foundation or Universidad Nacional a distancia (UNED).
