Pre Paris

Santiago Ydáñez‘s work represents another extension of the poetics on the body that have been so influentual over the past years in the international scene. Nonetheless, in his case it is around painting - as it is in other different cases from Luc Tuysmans to Marlene Dumas - that different questions, that seem to interest critics and artists, are formulated about identity or human nature. The fact that a painted portrait is an instrument of choice - and we are purposedly calling it instrument rather than theme - has made it so that he be associated with, above all a tradition that includes Edward Munch and Francis Bacon, rather than the poetics that we are referring to now. Because of this he has been classified as, I think superficially, Expressionist or Neoexpressionist, based solely on the appearance of his work. What is worse is that a careful analysis of appearance, in truth, leads to opposed conclusions.