LONDON.- Halcyon Gallery is presenting Unfinished Business, an exhibition of new works by Colombian artist Santiago Montoya. The solo exhibition, Montoya’s third at the gallery, provides a striking culmination of the artist’s endeavours since his acclaimed first exhibition at Halcyon Gallery, The Great Swindle (2012).
Unfinished Business sees Montoya continue to develop his dialogue spotlighting society’s contemporaneous relationships with money and the economy at large. Using uncirculated bank notes, he creates canvases which boldly illuminate tensions; questioning preconceptions and offering new pertinence to complex social constructs. The clichéd titles of Montoya’s work add an element of humour to his work enticing viewers into the debate.
Montoya views bank-notes as ready-made painted surfaces, as snapshots of time, theatres in which political propaganda and historic events play out. Yet these paintings come with their own pre-assigned commercial value which forms the basis of all international trade, relations and infrastructure. The result is artwork saturated with layers of meaning.
"For so many years, we fought nature to survive, and I wonder if, for some of us, the economy has taken its place. We´ve anchored our expectations for wellbeing, success and happiness on the economy. The economy has become a new god, which we all cease to understand. An incomprehensible mystery of which many prophets write about, at times becoming holy, and at others, an evil in disguise. For better or worse (interdependently inseparable), as inconclusive as things are in the sacred fields of religion – and economy, it seems that we have quite a distance to go before we conclude… all I pray is that in my time, it remains forever Unfinished Business.” Santiago Montoya
Montoya was born on 11 September 1974 in Bogotá, the second of three children in an enterprising family. After completing high school in Bogotá in 1993, Montoya undertook a mandatory year of military service and then enrolled for a Master of Fine Arts degree course at the Universidad de Los Andes, Bogotá (1995–2000). There he studied with the painter Luis Roldán and received training in a range of disciplines, from video to sculpture. Admiring the directness of Picasso’s artistic approach and strongly influenced by both Abstract Expressionism and Francisco Goya’s overwhelming black paintings, he set out to explore the language of composition and colour.
In 2006 Montoya was shortlisted for the IV Uniandinos (Alumni Association of the University of Los Andes) Arts Prize, awarded by the Galería Espacio Alterno, Bogotá. He has exhibited widely in Colombia and in Venezuela, Mexico, Panama, the United States, Korea, Spain, France, Luxembourg, Switzerland, Germany, Italy, Greece, Romania, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Poland, recently presenting the solo shows News from Africa at Arte Consultores in Bogotá (2008) and The Great Swindle at the B-146 Gallery in Zürich (2009). Group shows include Formarte, organised by the Fundación Corazón Verde, Bogotá (2009), the Tina b. Contemporary Art Festival, Prague (2009), Inner Journeys at Maison Particulière in Brussels (2013) and Conscienta: Latin American Consciousness at the Lloyds Club in London (2014). His first solo exhibition in London, The Great Swindle, opened in November in 2012 at Halcyon Gallery. Improbable Landscapes, the artist’s second solo show at the gallery, launched his series of large tapestries in June 2014, In October 2014 his Tally Sticks Project was presented, a large site-specific presentation in the main gallery space of 144 -146 New Bond Street. His work is currently being exhibited as part of the Repeat to Change exhibition at the Museum Of Fine Arts, Boston. The artist will have a major solo exhibition at the AMA/ Art Museum of the Americas in Washington D.C. in October 2016.
