Resume Norlan Santana - Costa Rica Art - abstract art - arte de Costa Rica

Resume

1998: "Aries", San Luis Mahón Race Course, Menorca, España.
1999: Santana and Sphian Fusion. "Own" Gallery Frankfurt, Alemania.
2000: "Mundos", Contemporary Gallery, Amsterdam, Netherlands.
2001: "Towns", Latin America Arts Gallery. B&B. Los Angeles, California, USA.
2002: "Texture and color over wood", Bronsson Gallery, Vancouver, Canada.
2003: "Santana, Recent Work", San Luis Mahón Race Course, Menorca, Baleares, España.
2006: "Ochre Cities", Gráfica Génesis Gallery, San José, Costa Rica.
2007: "Ochers Cities", Códice Gallery, Managua Nicaragua.
2007: "Seas", Essence Art Gallery, Rincón de la Victoria, Málaga, España
2007: "Recent Work" VIP Lounge, Aeropuerto Internacional, Alajuela, Costa Rica.
2007: "Green Dreams" National Gallery, Museo de los Niños, San José, Costa Rica.
2009: “Femenine Spaces”, Báculo Gallery, Madrid, España.
2009: “TRANSIT”, Antropology Museum, Historia y Arte, Rivas, Nicaragua.
2009: “Time Limited Infinite”, Arte 99 Gallery, San José Costa Rica.
2009: "City and Yesterday", Dau al Set Gallery, San José, Costa Rica.
2010: "A Fragmented kiss narrations", Salón Diplomático de los países Centroamericanos 15 de Setiembre, Berlín, Alemania.

Colective Shows

2007: “Art Auction”, Museo De Arte Moderno, San Salvador, El Salvador.
2008: “Art Auction”, Museo De Arte Moderno, San Salvador, El Salvador
2009: “JUANNIO-2009 Latinamerican Art Auction” Museo de Nacional de Arte Moderno Carlos Mérida, Guatemala.
2009: “Art Auction”, Museo De Arte Moderno, San Salvador, El Salvador
2010: “Art Auction”, Museo De Arte Moderno, San Salvador, El Salvador .
2011: “Art Auction”, Museo De Arte Moderno, San Salvador, El Salvador .

Norlan Santana has been included on different international art fairs, biennials and several international art exhibits like: Art and Sculpture Biennial, San José, Costa Rica; International Fair ART WI, Puerto Rico; Art Basel, Miami, USA; and has been on philanthropic activities like VALOARTE in Costa Rica, helping children in social risk.

Public Collections:

“GALERIA NACIONAL, MUSEO DE LOS NIÑOS”, San José, Costa Rica.
“MUSEO DE ANTROPOLOGIA, HISTORIA Y ARTE”, Rivas, Nicaragua.
"MUSEO NACIONAL DE ARTE MODERNO CARLOS MERIDA", Guatemala.
"MUSEO ARTE CONTEMPORANEO DE PANAMA", Panamá.

His works belongs to very important collections in: Spain, Germany, Netherlands, USA, Canada, Central America, France, Japan, Italy and several countries. Count with more than 30 individual exhibitions and 15 collectives. In 1997 receive the award "Artist of the year" granted by Genesis Gallery in San Jose Costa Rica. He also receive a Mention of Honor at Ruben Darío's Theater, in Nicaragua in the Painting Biennial. He was selected for Juannio's Award in 2009.

FROM ALCHEMY TO CONTEMPORARINESS

On a large, carefully organized table, there is an impressing amount of jars, bottles, test tubes, little cans and brushes, and from among these a few little figures emerge, sculptures of very discrete dimensions that stick out in the intricate but symmetric and impeccable landscape of streets and spaces that make up the map of the miniature city.

In the neighboring space, there are Works of large format. Behind the city table, there are works of smaller dimensions, and small works make up by even smaller Works, that have been connected like urban blocks meeting in one single composition. They are different elements that don´t lose their own identity, as it happens in any city or suburb in the world.

As one goes from the table, or store house, (closet o an alchemy study) to the finished Works, which in many cases have been in a kiln, a discourse is being woven, a discourse that take us into different realities, worlds, universes that range from the urban to the oniric and then on the intimate.

In his obsession for the use of top quality materials (he assures to us that his canvasses are 100% cotton), and brand pigments, or chemicals purchased in pharmacies or deposits, Norlan shows his respect for the past, his knowledge of the history of art and his awareness (an unusual commodity these days) of the need for the preservation of Works overtime. Thus his discourse wanders from Egypt to Altamira, from the Primitive to Miró, and we discover in the technical or pictorial strokes of his Works what he is telling us with his words.

This combination of dream and reality, of urban bird's eye views or architectonic elevations in which small characters (like they do in his table or store-house)and stains of color that take us to more elevated or intimate universes, depending on the eye of the viewer, makes up a testimonial work of the world in wich the artists lives and moves.
The work of Norlan Santana is in itself a very particular description of the real/surreal world in which we live every day, just as our wakefulness and sleep invite us to navigate, to let us go and discover universes that combine, intersect, intertwine and separate. His work, testimony and proposal, memory and vision, is destined to last not only in the material realm, but also in the spiritual realm of those who dare to navigate through it.

Eduardo Faith Jiménez
Museólogo

NORLAN SANTANA: THE MATERIALS THAT GIVE MEANING

I met Norlan Santana accidentally, it happened when we had to coordinate our times to set up one of his exhibits, which I supervised for a private space. I was surprised that this lawyer by profession preferred the ease of the brush to the stiffness of the career he had chosen at another time; it always surprises me that the gene of art, once inoculated, through a hobby, from a very early training or from a family pastime, can be so decisive in the live of some people. Norlan Santana is one of them.

His study is invaded by natural light, and when the rain gets worse, it becomes a laboratory of music. The latter maintains a noticeable presence in his pictures in the stains, the degradations, and the polyphony of materials; as if the works of Santana lived in that dichotomy between art of space and art of time. However it is time-not lineal time-actually the rhetoric, the personal, the affective time, that in its prominence, wins this battle.

He is now working in several series; however the common denominator of them all is the feeling of again of the pictorial territory and of that which many times is represented in it. From his urban series, the artist has said: "It is the fatigue of cities and their dynamics, due to the incidence of humans." This maxim from Santana is a concern that burdens him daily. The works of Santana seems to suffer, as in "The case of Benjamin Button," a regeneration. It is born being old; in other words, it is born out of an ancient process, wich is characteristic of Santana's production. We stand before an alchemist of the Twenty First Century, a magician who mixes colors, ancient stains, and organic materials, and with these he builds a contemporary work. Norlan Santana places the times side by side, he hides the details (characters, old boats, non informal stains) in the middle of a landscape that sometimes suggests a shipwreck, and other times a stellar Cosmo vision, His work conveys that magic of the old artist, the artist by trade, who is not distracted in his discourse, but who is distracted in the subject of that discourse and that subject provides the whole meaning.

In that almost religious sense of creation, one feels the aura of he who, although very young, enjoys prestige as a painter in the area. This recognition is doubly important, if we recognize that Norlan Santana is from a land where painting has a very solid rooting- Nicaragua, the land of Sovalbarro, Alejandro Arostegui, and Armando Morales, among other important figures of the Central American visual arts. Thus, in his case, to make his way through, he has had to struggle with a very important precedent that has helped him define not only his route, but also the necessary esthetic distance, so that his work may have a recognizable accent.

It would be unfair to reduce the work of Norlan Santana to the material aspect or to the abstract; although both are predominant categories. In the case of the material, it is due to that passion for pictorial "materials" that leans towards chemistry or science as an answer not only to art but also to the process of life. In the case of the abstraction it is due to the relaxation of shape in the work of Norlan Santana, which is a statement of his job. The winding of what is documented, or recorded pictorially, conveys a sort of unsaid message, of something that his imagination, his talent, and his interests recognize within the picture, and wich is not overtly said in the rest. Abstraction seems to be the dishonest act of his picture, in that drive for overlapping, for hiding or simply not saying at all. However, if we acknowledge that the life of every individual has those deep holes of the emotional order, and even of the esthetic order, all that "non place" that Santana reserves for himself, to sum it up, it is that mysterious and energetic place that we feel and perceive with other senses in his work. That place of feeling where matter reveals itself to talk about the picture, as a story about itself, is a sort of endless story; in that palace is the site where Santana's work archives its ultimate splendor. Where nothing is said. Because it is there, to be felt.

Clara Astiasarán
Febrero de 2009

NORLAN SANTANA.

My wife Ada and I met Norlan Santana, through a common friend, during the time when we were planning to open our own Art Gallery in San José, Costa Rica. Immediately after this, with this open spirit that characterizes him, he invited us to his shop so that we could get to know his work. In an instant, from the first sight, we knew that we were standing before a work that looked very interesting to us, a work that told a very personal story and reflected a unique style, and had a great projection into the future.
Incorrigible traveler (he has frequent exhibits in America and Europe); he is driven by the need to know firsthand the great cities, their buildings, their streets full of people that move in a chaos of traffic, bustle, and fumes. He soaks, in each of them, their lights, odors, and particular melody-sound, knowing that each city has its own fingerprint in such elements. Norlan, someone who enjoys nature in its pristine purity, cannot renounce his city soul and i sable to capture the fingerprints of cities through stains and lines that seem to be organized in a chaos.

In my opinion, there is in Norlan a hidden architect, someone who loves architecture as a containing element that surrounds and wraps up the everyday work, the misery, and the greatness of the inhabitants that are covered; being both an active and passive subject of history.

He paints moved by the memories from cities where he has lived in and toured, where he soaked the essences through his surprising look. Norlan's eyes denote a restless spirit and his eye guide the constant movement of body and hands, like painting the instant when he surprises those of us who follow his work. He is continuously experiencing new techniques that he has learned or created new, sometimes adopting unique elements that have value in themselves.

He uses physics (heat, cold), chemistry (pigments, acids or their derivatives) to shape or unshaped the vehicles of expression. However the hub, the center of gravity is color; he Works color in a powerful way, in a tremendously exquisite way. To me, the use of color is the main characteristic in the work of Norlan Santana.

His canvasses are distributed in private and public collections throughout Europe and America. A point of interest for us collectors who see in him an emerging artist in Mezzo-America, who is called to be among the great.

Jordi Belloc i Plana

Director-Owner DAU al SET Gallery, San José Costa Rica.

Norlan Santana

Innate artist with an extraordinary gift for painting, his works reflect an excellent make, balance and composition, and ingenuity to achieve the harmony of colors. Fresh stroke, spontaneous, full of life and color.

Careful, not only in the way he chooses his friends, but also in the way he chooses the material that he uses for painting. Norlan Santana leaves nothing to chance, because he is thorough in the design of everything he makes; he chooses formats, materials and fabrics of top quality, getting as a result a work of excellent finish.

He loves to experiment, to explore-he investigates pigments until he gains mastery of them. He is fascinated with the history and has a special taste for antiquities; this is why his house and shop are full of old art and antiques.

With a mix of composure and intuition, Norlan Santana is able to convert every fabric in a work of art with a masterly touch. More than a painter, he is a magician, an alchemist, and a true scientist of color.

The technique he uses in his works is pure alchemy: he applies fire, he studied the chemical properties of the materials to be used, the temperature at which he must subject them to, in other words, there is a complete cooking job, which results in a work that is well done!

There is in the majority of his works a concern for time. This is why he inlays elements from ancient times and mixes them with contemporary strokes, memories from cities and long gone times.

There is in his more recent works concern for ecology and the urban habitat; since , as the artist himself says: "The human being limits himself, because he pollutes everything, uses up everything; and he is doing too little to remedy the condition of the planet"
The objective of his more recent works (2010) is that the human being becomes more aware of what is happening to humanity and the environment.

Another great message Norlan's works convey, is the world of feelings, emotions, sensations, that the artist as well as the viewer experience. "A human being lives in a limited space and time; and the farther he walks away from God, the less time he has, and his life hangs on a thread and his existence becomes a chaos." With these words the artist defines another one of his great concerns that are present in his works.
The most interesting thing about abstract art is that there are no unique interpretations to the exclusion of all others, so Norlan's intention is that each work speaks for itself.
Some of them speak about the city. This is why among the stains and colors we notice chaos, pollution, explosions, power lines, and this is observed in portions of the picture that look confusing and chaotic, giving way to other portions where the viewer can breathe and find calm and rest. These sharp contrasts are the elements that give strength and dramatic quality to the work of Norlan Santana. Some works take you to the macro-cosmos-far away worlds, constellations, black holes, the universe, the sidereal space. Other are reminiscent of the micro-cosmos-the tissues under the skin , arteries, veins, blood vessels, blood that flows through the intricate ways of the human body, and sometimes clots and obstructs the passages and bruises the tissues.
Whatever the interpretation one give to his works; the richness of each one them lays in the multiple and varied sensations that convey to each viewer. There is no doubt that Norlan Santana is one of the great artists in abstraction, not only in the Central American region, but also in the whole world.

María Elena Masís
Historiadora del Arte
San José, Costa Rica

About Norlan

Norlan Santana, who has been devoted to plastic art almost a decade, has demonstrated that he is a fast process of artistic maturing, and an intense and continuous transformation. He introduced us into his art with "Autoretrato" (self-portrait) in which a strong primitivistic concept is observed, a distinction of color is made, and an insight into his future works is given.

Then, the color , his next phase is a creative rush of colors, combined with spots, the suggested shapes that balance out the expressionism of his work, with a degree of simply informal abstraction, and then the lines and the curves that are shown even today in his canvasses, lines that are always moving and meeting themselves, without escaping reality. He also uses a richness of textures which give more realism to the elements, thus adding more strength to the colors-sea blue, blood red, earth other, gray sand- and he is always enhancing one element over another through the use of what could be a stroke, a color, a square or a line, in which the spatula is more prominent than the brush.

As an artist, he has continued to be critical of the social and cultural context of the Central American countries, and has enriched his works as a result of the rationality that defines each one of them, because even though they may looks similar, they are all different in one unique characteristic. In his Ocher phase he threw all his efforts into the origin-the creation-nature concept-in which color is simply soaked in his emotional phases with a sort of melancholy that is observed more clearly in his works of boats, of very primitive strokes, although they are wrapped up in a specific aura in his work Los dos BARCOS (The Two Boats) , where blue, the color of thought, begins with a light blue that gradually becomes blue, being this a gradual change from serenity to reflection, from independence and at the same time emotional dependence to the bond of a couple-the married couple-. The boat continues its dance by wandering in a sea of various contexts, textures, and elements of a freedom that is essential for his work.
In his murals, the main topic has been the urban context, in which ecology is respected, thus the eco-urban landscape, where monkeys are immersed in their green surroundings and they are learning to be neighbors of man, where lianas decorate the frame of a door or the sketch of a house, and more impact causes the observation of each work in these gigantic formats, whose dimensions suggest strength and prominence. In his conceptual stage, torsos and windows also take an important space of study, where the always perfect torsos accentuate the thick filling fiber of male silhouettes of sharply defined strokes. However natural weaknesses are pointed out to show man as an inferior being and elevate he woman to the level of a dominant and reproductive sensual symbol which is inherent to the poetry of color such as the orange of beautiful dawns and red dawns in the context of passion, of pronounced nipples, appealing again to the concept of mother goddess. The windows function as that repetitive critical eye, with a sense of alertness to what happens in the surroundings, where the human eye finds no limit to see the sky, the mountains, the sea, the guts of the earth and even the beat of a hear, longitudes and latitudes, from one single point of view-sensitivity.

Each work has its own purpose and context, there is done at random, but is not very intended, each work defines first and foremost, this emotional aspect in which the author is dying, and sailing, drowning and saving, the loss of the road, insecurity of a feeling or a conviction, each fragile line is a feeling that is bankruptcy, something that needs to be joined, something which only the eyes as meaning can reassemble, as a game, we began to see a line, curve and suddenly we lost or joins another ending in a way, as saying to love , there are villages where I miss, but I always find you, although I go by the edges always I will return to the Centre of what moves me, what it is this machine creations, our (the soul) interior engine.

Norlan Santana, with its prolific activity and rapid maturation, deservedly, has won a fixed on the walls of our memory, an artist that weigh space of crossing the ocean with her voice, not forgotten its Latin American reality commitment to lead as billowing, flags giving us that pleasant breath provide more and more artist that worry of create, imagine and transform a stroke, even for a moment, our realities.