We all carry within us a space where traces of the past are kept, a room filled with images and voices. To enter is to gain the freedom to go anywhere, to step into an inner apartment populated by figures, shadows, scents.
Elias Peña Salvador opens the door to such a space in his second solo exhibition, The West to the Sun, at Hew Hood Gallery. The exhibition unfolds as a journey through the architecture of his memory. Four new paintings depict four different scenes, each imbued with hazy recollections of lived moments. It is as if what has passed sets the gears in motion for the artist, activating an internal mechanism, a trigger to depict his story. Here, glimpses of the past seem caught in paint, while the brushstrokes on the canvases question what truly happened in that instant.
The four paintings have lived with the artist in his home-studio, beside his bed. In beholding them, we peer into Salvador’s daily life: a day at work, a day in the rush of London, then home again – and a new mark on the canvas, like a note added to a notebook. Each brushstroke becomes a quiet record of the day, a way to understand and transform what the artist has experienced – past and present overlap, and unresolved stories continue to shape the here and now. At night, his paintings rest at his side, like a glass of water kept next to bed while you sleep.
Text by Francesco Pasquini