Title- Ruins one Technique- Photography and printmaking Measures- 280×50 cm Year- 2015
Briefly describe the work you do.
Nowadays the works i´m developing are mainly based on the fusion between engraving technique and photography. Starting from pictures already printed, I involve them into different engraving techniques, impressing on them different molds. The impressing techniques I’m using to are based in transferring and re-levering. Another works I perform belong to a mix of different artistic disciplines, getting into the performatic engraving, performing sets and street art categories.
The thematic that guides my whole works is my personal point of view about human behaviors in society; how the society we belong to, limits our natural development and thinkings by politics, religion, real and false fears, our sexuality, social and economic state, identity, the death…vital matters.
Tell us about your background and how that has had an influence on your work and on you as an artist.
I started in 1988 being trained as an engraving artist and printing in different studios and publishers.I was working and collaborating with different artists like poets,philosophers and critics,in graphic projects.
All these different experiences along my artistic career have given to me the great chance to find out my own personal way of working to develop myself into the contemporary art using and mixing techniques, testing new ideas and methods, becoming a multi-disciplinary artist.
Title-Penitarum Technique- Photography and printmaking Measures- 300×70 cm Year- 2015
The concept of the artist studio has a broad range of meanings in contemporary practice. Artists may spend much of their time in the actual studio, or they may spend very little time in it. Tell us about your individual studio practice and how it differs from or is the same as traditional notions of “being in the studio.”
My study is like a part of my everyday routine.It is the place where i I spend most of my time, where i develop every new artistic project from the first idea until the final result, from the beginning until the end. So everyday, in the morning and in the evening i have established to myself a working discipline so it is the best way for my creative processes to flow and develop different and new ways of creation.
It’s the perfect environment for the development and experimentation, which smells like wood, paper, inks…
What roles do you find yourself playing that you may not have envisioned yourself in when you first started making art?
There is a huge necessary parallel work i have been performing at every step along my artistic career: you have to work hard and a long time to find out the best way to spread internationally your work.This suppose to me a whole exhaustive searching of new and interesting exhibition projects, calls, new openings, competitions…Opportunities like this, the 365ARTIST/365DAYS gives to contemporary artists like me, and from all around the world, the chance to create a new opening way and get in touch with the international scene, abroad and out of Spain (in my case).
When do you find is the best time to make art? Do you set aside a specific time everyday or do you have to work whenever time allows?
I use to be at my study in the morning and in the evening almost everyday per week.Creating, developing, planning…on my own way…That´s why both of the sittings permit me positive characteristics to work.
I´m used to flow and find out new ideas by the way i´m working on…so i get the inspiration.
Title- Fatum Technique- Photography and printmaking Measures- 180×40 cm Year- 2015
How has your work changed in the past five years? How is it the same?
The progress that has been my work in the last five years is above all on the subject of my pieces, getting closer to the realm of the social and human behavior. I am also in constant evolution in the pursuit of relationship with other artistic currents recorded as performative engraving, installation, street art etc.
The firm idea to use everything offered by the engraving and printing in the field of experimentation to make it available not only for the traditional uses but in a new artistic way :the idea of unique pieces as the results of merging them, one by one, with other artistic disciplines.This is my encouragement.
How have people such as family, friends, writers, philosophers, other artists or even pop icons had an impact on the work you do?
Since I started my career like a apprentice i have been working hand to hand, in touch with artists, philosophers, poets, critics etc… this has helped me to develop both my training and my evolution as an artist.
All the people I’ve shared my lifetime had improved my life to become the human being i am, involved in the “here and now” of the society around you, around me, around us.
And this´s the central line not only in my artistic works but also in my life.
Have you ever been pulled in the direction of a pursuit other than being an artist? What are your other interests?
In my case I have the luck that external activities conducted promptly indirectly have to do with my development as an artist. In the delivery of courses and workshops engraving and implementation issues as coach of graphic work for other artists.
Another of my interests in the art world is music, in my case experimental electronic music, a field in which I have developed some compositions for performance pieces, short etc.
About
Santiago Roldan Madrid 1973. Starts his training as an engraving in 1988 at different traditional engraving venues and editorial engraving in Madrid. His work mixes photography and engraving uses on them to get unique Works that are into the performatic engraving area, installation and street art. His Works have been shown at museums and art galleries in the United States, Holland, England, France, México, Costa Rica, Italy, Netherlands, Hungary, Brazil, Peru, Turkey, Morocco and Spain.
All images copyright of the artist and used with their permission.
365 Artists | 365 Days 