THEY MAKE LOVE IN THE NAME OF DEVIL | VÍCTOR SOLANA | 13.09.2019 – 26.10.2019

Staff of the exiles, light of the inventors, Confessor of the hanged men and the conspirators,
Oh Satan, have mercy on my long misery!

Charles Baudelaire

In a unique process of diabolization of the ancient gods, the secular cult TO Nature has been given to the service of Satan, and the vernacular pagan priesthoods transfigured into witchcraft. For power structures, religion and politics are two sides of the same coin, complementary and aimed to bend, control and subdue the people. Fear, its most perfected and perverse strategy. In front of a massively illiterate population, Satan stands as his most faithful agent and become the perfect tool for the exercise of oppression.

Irreducible, the forces that Devil embodies have remained dormant in contemporary societies transformed and updated into popular celebrations that the new political orders have endeavored to eradicate. The emancipated expression of the forces of nature makes the human being free, self-conscious and a not tamed agent. The eternal dialectic: chaos vs order.

Solana manages to compose an apology of sensuality, the triumph of imagination over ascetic and an abstract spirituality of Christianity. Visionary manages to define modern morals based on repression, the triumph of appearance and the domestication of consciences. The artist asks questions and place the viewer in the most awkward position: the self-questioning.

Embracing Devil will rise as the highest expression of freedom, apology of the exceptional, the triumph of individuality against the directed mass. The same spirit guides Solana, who has always opted for the personal statement, apart from temporary fashions and speeches, to trace his own path, his particular way of telling stories that, supported by a whirlwind of cross-references, strongly question normative schemes and the powers that sustain them.

Plastically, he has maintained a recognizable style, but he has abandoned the comfort of the safe to move forward. There is past, present and future in these pieces that do not deny their origin, they even celebrate it, but in forms that, in a living, organic development, have evolved.

We attend a resounding manifestation of the Great Painting in which echoes the great masters of the Spanish school, assimilated and understood by Solana who provides surprising plastic solutions and representation strategies, influenced by other neomediatic narratives and protected in an intense introspection on the effects of contemporary visual culture.

Making love in the name of the devil, is a deep idea questioning the principle of authority. It stands as a supreme act of rebellion and freedom. It assumes transgression, both in the plastic, social and spiritual ways, as an exact device of progress. That means the awareness of oneself identity, knowing oneself different, the ability to act based on personal reflection, to understand instinct as the only valid way to escape the bonds of the imposed and rational.