Manuel Solano: Painting from Memory

Manuel Solano is a 33 years old Mexican painter who became blind after an HIV treatment complication in 2012. As per Solano’s request, the pronouns and adjectives they them are used throughout the citation.

Their interest and engagement with art are long-standing: before losing their sight in 2012 they were producing realist painting and now their health issues have brought about a looser style.  

The necessity to paint despite the serious health issue obstacle has brought them to envision new techniques like pinning pegs on the canvas and linking them with a thread to mark the outlines, which Solano fills by painting with their bare hands, thus trying to keep the closest possible contact with their work.

Their inability to see implies that Solano doesn’t represent what their gaze encounters impetuously, but rather any pictorial choice seems carefully pondered: it is in the act of reminiscence that they really acquire knowledge of the object.

Thanks to their visual and photographic brain, their memories became a great arena for experimentation, from where Solano could pick new ideas and revisit any of the previously utilized motifs.

 The sense of touch plays a newfound role in their practice with sculpture: paying a tribute to Art Deco artist Pompon, Solano produces more modern animals, with a touch of Camp.

When Susan Sontag defined Camp in 1964, she argued that “Camp sees everything in quotation marks. It’s not a lamp, but a ‘lamp’; not a woman, but a ‘woman’. To perceive Camp in objects and people is to understand Being-as-Playing-a-Role. It is the farthest extension, in sensibility, of life as theatre.”

Manuel Solano’s capacity to stage a quasi theatrical scene by drawing from their memory is also found in their depiction of personalities coming from the world of Pop. Ranging from Micheal Jackson, the artist’s childhood hero (whose shoes could be defined as ‘shoes’), to Nicki Minaj, he extends these dramatic qualities to every subject represented, themselves included.

Untitled from The Series Pose, 2018

 Their inward-oriented approach and research has lead them to analyze themself constantly, thus producing an identity-driven work: we can find a spark of the artist’s persona in every subject portrayed: from their mother Claudia, to whom they clearly resemble, to a woman met in the metro in which they saw a sort of doppelganger.

 Solano’s great capacity to overcome the threats posed by blindness made them succeed in reinforcing their practice and sharpening their sensibility to a degree which appeals to the viewer in a manner that is ever more strong and impactful.