Samuel Salcedo was born in Barcelona, Spain in 1975 and studied at the College of Fine Arts at the University of Barcelona and at the Manchester Metropolitan University. He graduated in Fine Arts from the University of Barcelona in 1998. Salcedo has exhibited in various venues over the past decade throughout Spain with his distinctive sculpture work.
Since 1998, the artist exhibits his sculptures in art galleries and participates in international Art Fairs with 3 Punts Galeria. Since then he has had numerous exhibitions in 3 Punts Galeria, Galerie Robert Drees from Hannover (Germany), Osnova Gallery in Moscow, Soda Gallery in Istanbul or Can Sisteré Center for Contemporary Art, among others.
“‘I invent a lot. They are not real human beings. They look realistic though. I work with photos. I interchange heads and bodies of various people from different photos. Sometimes it happens that I don’t have any women, but the faces of the giant heads are from women.” Samuel Salcedo
See also: Playful Art Installation by Graphic Artist Camille Walala
Salcedo’s sculptural work is characterized by technical excellence. One can see his mastery in the diversity of the materials he uses (resin, wood, aluminum) and which integrate painting, the discipline with which he began his career. His sculptures and characters always question the viewer with their subtle irony and vulnerability.
And about his inspirations, Samuel Salcedo says:
“Inspiration is something strange because I can think if I am not at my studio. I need to be doing things. There is not one moment where you make decisions to change everything, like when you have done something then you can understand what you have done and find the energy to start again, and what I start is never the same when it ends.”
Bewilderment was Salcedo most famous art installation, in this one the artist talks to us about human relations, isolation, groups, the relations of couples, friendship, violence…To do so, he places 16 large spherical sculptures on which he has modeled a facial expression, arranged as if a dumpster had dumped them all at once and chance and the forces of physics had decided their placement in the universe. Some are left isolated and alone, others form groups, or couples, while some will perhaps collide and in an act of supposed cannibalism devour each other.
For Salcedo, these spherical sculptures on which he models faces with different expressions are metaphors for human beings so we see sculptures with facial expressions of joy, pleasure, lust, indifference… or bewilderment, on the one that lends the title to the installation, regarding the unexpected state, time, and place where it has landed.
