The Work of Francisco Salazar: A Meditation on Cardboard
Abstract/Artist's Statement
Since the 1950s, Francisco Salazar has created a body of work composed entirely of monochromatic white works on cardboard. Despite the inherent simplicity of these works, Salazar has accomplished an astounding sense of variation within these pre-ordained parameters. He has relinquished gesture and color to allow his works an autonomy that characterizes their effect. Essentially, it is a work that systematically arranges light and shadow. It is perpetually animated by the play of light and the infinite variations of the space surrounding it. My senior project revises the placement of Salazar within the multinational lexicon of modernity; it analyzes the work from a European, Latin American, and specifically, Venezuelan perspective. I spent the summer of 2012 interviewing the 76-year old artist in Paris, where he has resided permanently since 1967.