Roland Santana: Paintings
Untitled
Roland Santana
2021
Poly Foam and Acrylic mounted on wood
12” x 6.5” x 3”
Parallel World
Roland Santana
2021
Poly Foam mounted on wood
24” x 21” x 3”
Everytime I Start Dreaming
Roland Santana
2021
Acrylic, Plaster, Pigments, Medium on Raw Canvas
30” x 24”
Liquid Sky
Roland Santana
2021
Acrylic, Plaster, Pigments, Medium on Raw Canvas
30” x 24”
Sun Dissolve 01
Roland Santana
2021
Acrylic, Plaster, Silicone, Poly Foam mounted on Wood
11” x 8” x 2”
Sun Dissolve 02
Roland Santana
2021
Acrylic, Plaster, Silicone, Poly Foam mounted on Wood
10.5” x 7.5” x 2”
Take Me To Pluto
Roland Santana
2021
Acrylic, Enamel, Poly Foam mounted on Wood
10.5” x 6.5” x 3”
Creatures of Rhythm
Roland Santana
2021
Acrylic, Plaster, Poly Foam, Phosphorescent Paint mounted on Wood
5.5” x 5.5” x 3”
Off Trance
Roland Santana
2021
Foam, Plaster, Acrylic
10.5” x 8.5” x 6.5”
Artist retains copyright and all licensing privileges to the artwork.
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About the Artwork
Santana’s most recent collection is deeply inspired by his childhood and experience with the American construction industry. His parents immigrated from Guatemala and Bolivia to Virginia, and in his early teen years he learned the craft of painting while working in his father’s construction company. During the recession of 2008, Santana and his father would remove objects and furniture from foreclosed homes, then clean and paint the walls white, leaving no trace of its inhabitants. This emotional process of whiting out lived experiences inspired Santana to consider the value of material and life: the stains and marks on each home captured the movement and memories of families who had lived in these spaces.
His chosen medium--poly foam, often used on job sites-- is a bridge between his utilitarian past and artistic present. His self-described “weird, squishy forms” are encapsulated in glossy painted tones that layer futuristic-inspired fluorescent pinks and playful lemon drop yellows across the functional matter.
About the Artist
Born May 11, 1995 in Vienna, Virginia, Roland is a Latin-American artist and DJ. His parents who immigrated from Bolivia and Guatemala introduced Santana to industrial processes and materials in his early teen years while working with his father in construction. During their downtime his father who was a DJ and dancer in the 90’s introduced Santana to the technicolor world of the early rave scene. This vibrant romanticism of this underground culture would be the driving force in his creative journey with music and visual art. Through this organic unconventional way of understanding aesthetics, he later pursued an artistic practice leading him to move to Chicago for a college education. The first of his family to live in this city, he found himself diving straight into a world of subculture’s that can only be found here. Surrounding himself with filmmakers, street artists, and DJ’s, Santana became even more intrigued in the relationship between visuals and sound. Roland Santana began to develop a style that allows viewers to see the work impact a much bigger part of the surrounding space, like sound waves reflecting off the walls of a room. Colors are transforming, transmuting, unlocking the passage from reality to a euphoric dream world. The minimal contents and sculpture essence of his work question if what Santana is making are paintings at all, it is puzzling and weird. Roland Santana is a rainbow ranging from electric lime green to melancholic shades of purple and pink. He is luminous and dark. Today Santana has gained the likes of several galleries and collectors and has participated in showcases in spaces such as Mana Contemporary, Chicago Art Department, NADA, AMFM, Belong Gallery, Comercio Popular, Ortega y Gasset Projects (Brooklyn, NYC), Baby Blue Gallery, Heaven Gallery, Chuquimarca Projects and more.
exhibition: The Cube, DEMI - Johalla Projects & Roland Santana
The Cube, Demi is proud to announce our inaugural exhibition, in collaboration with Print & Object, The Escapist Resort by artist Roland Santana. Roland Santana’s artist practice exists in a self-created realm dense with contradictions, conflations, and contemplations. In this space, seemingly disparate contexts, such as futurism/nostalgia, stability/instability, and function/aesthetic blend and blur on the same plain.
Demi is also a site of contradictions, a project space that is small in scale yet mighty in mission. It is home to a collaboration between Print and Object and Johalla Projects where an exhibition space and an editions program meet. With this in mind, Santana is the ideal inaugural artist to christen The Cube.
Santana’s most recent collection is deeply inspired by his childhood and experience with the American construction industry. His parents immigrated from Guatemala and Bolivia to Virginia, and in his early teen years he learned the craft of painting while working in his father’s construction company. During the recession of 2008, Santana and his father would remove objects and furniture from foreclosed homes, then clean and paint the walls white, leaving no trace of its inhabitants. This emotional process of whiting out lived experiences inspired Santana to consider the value of material and life: the stains and marks on each home captured the movement and memories of families who had lived in these spaces.
His chosen medium--poly foam, often used on job sites-- is a bridge between his utilitarian past and artistic present. His self-described “weird, squishy forms” are encapsulated in glossy painted tones that layer futuristic-inspired fluorescent pinks and playful lemon drop yellows across the functional matter.
Precariously placed, Santana invites the viewer to look for his work in the least expected locations. Preferring refrigerator doors or inconspicuous corners to the central wall of a gallery, each piece reimagines its surrounding space and creates a kind of radiating aura, prompting viewers to take notice of other aesthetic experiences in their everyday lives.
In this current exhibition, shed what may be presumed when viewing art and walk into the synergy of the past and future, the friction of labor and delight, and the willingness to look for the unexpected.
The Escapist Resort is in partnership with Johalla Projects and Print and Object.
Santana’s notable colorful works are a continuation of his experimental processes with material. Crossing bridges between sculpture and painting, Santana’s works are other-wordly. Large chunks of paint emerge from the raw canvas, playfully inviting you in as they enter into the 3D world. Roland Santana is not shy to tingle your senses with his vibrancy.