The exhibition features Giralda’s most recent work, with paintings that are presented to the public for the first time and are the product of a practice that he put in place upon his arrival to New York: “I give a lot of importance to the fact that I am living in the place that I am investigating. As such, my process is based in photographing different places in the city, including botanical gardens, parks, and even plants in a flower pot in the middle of Fifth Avenue. I like to observe how adaptation occurs between urban and natural environments. In the past, I have composed images with my computer, editing the images with others that I would find online. This process is my way of connecting my work with a virtual media environment that I also consider to be part of the landscape. Then I paint the works utilizing a pictorial process that emphasizes the material and physical aspects of the painting. The process of painting permits me to link my work with a certain history, and to connect with a pace of viewing that proceeds from the margins of the speed of city and internet environments.”

 “I approach the city as a paradigm of contemporary landscape. However, I am interested more in natural spaces that traverse the city. I want to investigate the place that nature occupies in such a contaminated context. Drawing from the images that I take of those natural enclosed environments, I paint compositions that represent nature as a sensual and rich experience. In a certain way, I utilize painting to give another context to those natural spaces, and even if it is at a representative level, they read as exuberant natural scenes outside of the city environment as they find in painting a context far from ambient noise.” Santiago Giralda

Santiago Giralda (Madrid, 1980) lives and works in New York. His work is featured in many collections, including those of the Ministerio de Cultura, Banco Santander, DKV, and Caja Madrid. His solo debut in New York coincides with the intense work that he is developing at the Pratt Institute thanks to the Fulbright grant that he was awarded a year after having been granted a fellowship at the Real Academia de España in Rome. (MPA press-release)