Heading south

NEW YORK — I first encountered Souther Salazar’s delicate, ornate, complex and spirited artwork via short stories in various anthologies like the estimable Kramers Ergot, Studygroup 12, and Garlic. His playful style intrigued me, and I began to follow his work as he was doing his own mini-comics and strips for magazines like Giant Robot.

Later on when he had fully immersed himself into the world of fine arts, he maintained the sensibilities that made his work stand apart: a sense of narrative and world-building, an organic, handmade quality that hinted at the spirit of reconstruction and assimilation. So I found myself lucky that while I was in New York, the renowned Jonathan LeVine Gallery was exhibiting the largest collection yet of Salazar’s latest works.

Last Year’s Man, his second solo show for the gallery, did not disappoint, with over a hundred pieces, ranging from large paintings to small drawings to miniature sculptures.

The large paintings featured fully realized worlds populated with his signature cute and minimalist characters, interacting with each other in their environment in a number of ways.

“1000 Ways To Escape” features a circus fantasia of a landscape with a looming, giant, and what appears to be a sleeping cat. Around it are little flying ships made of cutout pieces of paper.

“Buried Head” shows a huge dinosaur with its head buried underground, and a cross-section of what’s going on underneath. One could spend a lot of time gazing at the works as I did because so much is happening and so much more is merely suggested. His use of found objects and collage have become more confident and assured, almost seamless with the parts that come straight from his imagination and paintbrush.On another level were smaller works, some snapshots of specific characters, and drawings that featured a more limited color palette, sometimes using only one color at a time. An entire room was devoted to these and suspended “balloons” made of light bulbs—each one carrying a different pilot or passenger.When I left, it felt like I had visited a surreal world that had its own laws of physics, one with colors we haven’t invented names for yet, populated by characters with lives of their own.

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Ramon De Veyra blogs at www.thesecuriousdays.com.