Joan Saló

Joan Saló (born 1983 in Igualada) lives and works in Berlin. His paintings revolve around states of transition—the space between light and shadow, presence and absence. Titles such as Umbra, Penumbra, Antumbra , or Hypnagogia refer to threshold moments of seeing and consciousness. Saló understands the image as a site of condensation: surface becomes space, darkness becomes the vehicle for nuances, color becomes event.

Trained at the University of Barcelona and the Accademia di Belle Arti di Bologna, he developed a reduced yet sensually charged visual language. He often works with limited color palettes, within which subtle shifts and depths unfold. The compositions follow no narrative logic; they emerge from concentration and repetition, from a process of layering and superimposing. In this way, the works acquire a quiet, almost contemplative intensity.

His works have been shown in international solo and group exhibitions, including in Berlin, Barcelona, ​​Monza, Paris, and New York. Grants and awards—including the Neustart Kultur grant from the Kunstfonds Foundation—have accompanied his continuous artistic development. Saló's painting asserts itself beyond short-term trends as a precise investigation of perception, time, and painterly substance.

Joan Saló

Q&A with the artists:

The exhibition ARTIFICIAL? Traces of the Present brings together works that question our perception. Reality appears not as a given, but as something that is constantly being appropriated. ARTIFICIAL? questions whether what we see and experience is not always already made, constructed, and mediated.

1) How does your work engage with reality and its construction, and what “traces of the present” become visible in it?

Everything that appears in my work is a "traceutical of the present." There is nothing hidden behind it. What you see is already evidence of a moment, an action, a decision. At the beginning of my career, my work was more process-oriented. The passage of time was one of my main concerns—how time leaves traces, how repetition transforms matter. In my more recent work, it is more accurate to speak of "traces of the present." Each mark functions like an element of a form of writing that is still under construction. It is not a fixed language, but an evolving one. The work becomes a surface upon which time, gesture, and presence are directly inscribed.

2) How does your work develop from the initial idea to completion, and what role does your presentation style play in this process?

There is no initial idea in the formal sense. Instead, there is a ritual—a sequence of gestures and internalized codes that guide the work to its final form. These codes are not predefined rules, but embodied knowledge accumulated over time. In my case, I wouldn't speak of representation, but of presentation. The work does not stand for something external, nor does it attempt to depict another reality. It presents itself as an event, as an immediate presence. What the viewer encounters is not the image of something else, but the material trace of an action unfolding in the present.