Solo Show: Montse Valdés

Valdés wants to capture this snapshot: the precise moment when the person is at peace. Through the experience of developing her technique over five years in Paris (perfecting the representation of hands, of bodies) and her subsequent exploration of the soul (particularly during her Asian experience), Valdés’ art has achieved the technique of portraying souls. In her work authenticity reigns, the forcefulness and depth of what is a naked, vulnerable soul, caught red-handed in the dressing room. And what do we find there? Surprise: the best of the human being.

In order to produce these works, Valdés also needs to find her moment of serenity and balance, to the point that in recent years she has even been able to work without life models. Valdés acts as an interlocutor between the physical and the spiritual, and from there colours emerge (greens, yellows, blues, the odd red…) which we believe we do not see or are not real, but are there. And they appear when the best of the person rises to the surface, like chromatic auras that, more than crowning us, envelope us.

Valdés’ oil paintings and works using diverse materials bring us closer to our innocence, to the genuine and uncorrupted part of us, which is our authentic version. She even dispenses with any accessory, adornment or any material distraction. The colour of the skin? What is that? What is skin, when we are able to locate emotional, mystical, symbolic colours, which rather than making us magical, humanise us. The imbalance exists, but our essence is balanced like yin and yang, clean and virginal, even almost asexual, stripped of all ego and all personality traits, like several of her figures. With Montse Valdés everything has a reason, because everything, absolutely everything, has an order.

Valdés tells us, with a serene voice, that the real nude is under the skin. And that a portrait of hers, even a glance, is a nude. Silence is a nude. Perhaps we are the true nude depicted in her work, and it is she who looks at us.