Juanma Moreno Sánchez

Juanma Moreno Sánchez - The Unsettling Valley

Biography of the Artist: FORMATION Graduated in Fine Arts at the Faculty of Fine Arts Alonso Cano, Granada, 2004-2009. Master in Application Development for web and mobile devices, Seville, 2013-14 LLP Erasmus Scholarship, Halle Saale, Germany, 2007-08 SELECTION OF AWARDS AND RESIDENCIES: 2014 The Pollock-Krasner Foundation, production grant, New York. 2011-2012 Antonio Gala Foundation for young creators, 10th promotion, Cordoba 2010 GlogauAIR Residence Program, Berlin 2006 1st Prize "Lefranc&Bourgueois Scholarships for Artistic Creation", Granada, Spain INDIVIDUAL EXHIBITIONS 2020 "Of the mystical and the absurd", virtual exhibition at Zunino Gallery. 2019 "33. The disillusionment", La 13 dada trouch Gallery, Huelva 2017 "#blessed", Un gato en Bicicleta, Seville "I was there", La Silla Eléctrica, Seville 2016 "Never Gone Forever", Gallo Rojo factoría de creación, Seville 2014 "Augmented Painting", Red House, Seville 2013 "Seemingly unconnected stories", Aula Magna de Capuchinos, Alcalá la Real. 2012 "Juanma Moreno", No-Lugar, the art company, Seville 2008 "Bystanders", Harz Mensa, Halle Saale, Germany. SELECTION OF GROUP EXHIBITIONS 2019 "Networks of faith", Renace Art gallery, Jaén. 2018 "Everything fits", Zunino gallery, Seville. 2015 "A paloma muerta", Estudio 22, Logroño 2015 "Promotion equis", Espacio Cienfuegos, Málaga 2014 "MULTI/TUTTI/FEST", Espacio Cienfuegos, Málaga 2012 "Room Art Fair #2, young art fair" Praktik Metropol, Madrid. 2011 "Weisser TV", 129 Gallery, Berlin "MEHR LICHT, tribute to Chema Alvargonzalez" GlogauAIR Project Space, Berlin "Modern Classic, influence of the past in today's art", Your Mum, Berlin "II Art Market at Your Mum", Your Mum, Berlin 2010 "The Mac Gyver Problem", Galerie im Regierungsviertel/The Forgotten Bar, Berlin 2009 "XXL-Art", Centro de Arte Contemporáneo Damián Bayón, Granada, Spain. "The most elegant of the greenhouse III", Jesús Puerto Gallery and Hospital Real Granada. 2008 "Jahresende Ausstellung", Kornhaus of Burg Giebichenstein, Halle Saale, Germany. WORKS IN COLLECTIONS Antonio Gala Foundation for young artists Lefranc&Bourgeois, Burg Giebichenstein Sierra Sur Group private collections in Spain and Germany.

 

The Unsettling Valley of Juanma Moreno Sánchez By Marisol Salanova In the paintings of Juanma Moreno Sánchez (Jaén, 1986) there are many details that invite us to stop, at the same time that the desire to recreate oneself in them is unsettling. They are not pieces of quick consumption, of those that the public would discard passing in front of them for a few seconds. Something arouses interest and attraction through grotesque or disturbing elements that burst into the composition and provoke a certain admiration, followed by an immediate discomfort. One of the secrets they keep is the fact that such elements have been inspired by a generative artificial intelligence. Yes, we are faced with dreamlike landscapes and portraits of strange beings that arise partly from the artist's imagination and partly from the experimentation he carries out with an autonomous system. Thus, we are able to identify figures that are familiar to us but we find indeterminate masses, people with extra limbs and plants or objects in unusual juxtapositions. It is slightly reminiscent of those scenes by Lucien Freud where we discovered characters with three arms or three legs, in a singular mixture of figuration and surrealism. In the same way, the flesh, the physicality, becomes important in Moreno Sánchez's work with a plastic language that combines tradition and insolence, sometimes going beyond the limits of modesty. The theory of the Uncanny Valley comes from the field of robotics, was elaborated in the 70s of the last century and makes sense in the framework of Moreno Sanchez's work. It originally argues that when anthropomorphic replicas come too close to the appearance and behavior of a real human being, they cause a rejection response among people. We are captivated by the humanoid because of its resemblance and repelled because, according to the theory, it activates the subconscious fear that all of us are also soulless mechanical systems. This ties in with the anxiety of uncertainty about perception and the tendency towards predictive coding. We want to predict what is going to happen in our daily lives and in the pictures we contemplate, and if we fail to do so, the feeling is bittersweet. It is exciting on the one hand and frustrating on the other. Nothing bad is happening in the scenes depicted, however we observe a context of tension that is constant, underlying each of the artist's works that make up the exhibition project. A sinister event is going to happen, the painting seems to point it out. It shows us the moment before the disaster, a controlled chaos of indeterminate creatures, confused, expectant and beautiful in their strangeness. In fact, it is recurrent the presence of oranges, fruits that allude to the expiration of everything beautiful, referring to the ephemeral and short life. But also that perhaps tragedy is brewing, because both in painting and in cinema the appearance of oranges is often used as a metaphor to indicate that a problem or betrayal is looming. Schiller explained from philosophy that when we sense that "the sad, terrible and horrifying is approaching, it attracts us with an irresistible fascination". Even if most people do not recognize it. And that artists can allow themselves the freedom to capture this because they create a fiction from which to relate the unconscious. That which escapes the norm produces fear, index and sign of desire that resonates, in the most intimate, something unknown that scares us that we like. In an exercise of pictorial liberation, predominating the blue tones and a very special green, different textures veil serene faces, stopped and contained in each work. Animals of solemn profile and nature hybridized with mobile, computer or tablet screens, populate a conceptual universe in which the abject acquires aesthetic value to return to the viewer its dark reflection.