Teran

TERÁN (Chile, 1974).
"Tribute to Fontana", 2021.
Oil and acrylic on canvas.
Attached certificate issued by the artist's studio.
Signed and titled on the back.
Measurements: 100 x 100 cm; 106 x 106 cm (frame).
Terán reinterprets the iconic technique immortalized by Lucio Fontana. Terán's painting recreates as a trompe l'oeil one of the most groundbreaking actions of contemporary art, which consisted of tearing the canvas. However, it is through a polished technique and the use of different shades and variations, the way in which Terán recreates Fontana's technique. In the catalog of the exhibition "Tribute to the Geniuses", it is stated that "Terán tries to postulate the return of painting as a symbolic strategy. His tributes, which take the form of pastiches, but are not. The artists he chooses to pay tribute to are admired by him (Francis Bacon, Banksy, Marc Chagall, Jean Dubuffet, Lucio Fontana, Francisco de Goya, Lucian Freud, Keith Haring, David Hockney, Robert Indiana, Jaspers Johns, Yves Klein, Kusama-Velázquez, Roy Lichtenstein, René Magritte, Roberto Matta, Joan Miró, Pablo Picasso, Jackson Pollock, Joaquín Sorolla and Andy Warhol). The list could not be more heterogeneous. It does not follow any order. He pays homage to those artists he admires, even when his own work bears no relation to theirs. The heterogeneity of his preferences is evident and proves E. Gombrich right, for whom there is no art but artists. This extreme nominalism leads him to skip aesthetic categories, as well as chronologies".
A Chilean artist living in Spain, with a degree in Fine Arts, Manuel Terán has developed his creative work in the field of plastic arts and new technologies applied to art. Since he became known in 1995 at the Salón de Otoño del Círculo de Bellas Artes in Santiago de Chile, he has held solo exhibitions and participated in group shows and fairs in Latin America and Europe. He has received awards such as the Real Academia de San Carlos de Valencia (2004).