MATÍAS SÁNCHEZ

Matías Sánchez (Tübingen, 1972) presents his own dark version of history and everyday life. The characters in his work are both frightening and charming. A theater of marginalized folk and animals, more rural in character than urban. Smokers, drunkards, farmers, rats, ugly cats, and unappreciated philosophers. One thinks of the vagabonds in Luis Buñuel’s, Viridiana. The poetics of ugliness. These paintings are dense in form and storytelling. From an early age Sánchez was exposed to Spanish Baroque painters like Juan de Valdés Leal, who flourished in Andalucía, especially in Seville, where the artist has spent most of his life. His packed compositions and exaggerated figurative gestures illustrate a visceral response to that historical moment. “Exaggeration is what we live off everyday” (Matías Sánchez).