Angelus Novus
On the other side of the Andes lived a man who had crossed the border.
During the day, he walked beneath the sun. The sun was always with him. It seemed to make no distinction between one decision and another, simply illuminating every corner and every action. It even cast its light on the man's past as he gathered more and more fragments of illuminated memories.
At night, the moon appeared above the Andes. Sometimes it hung suspended in the sky; other times, it seemed to rest on the ground and grow like a sprouting seed. Every moon, night after night, bore the same face of someone growing older. Surely, something had germinated and was beginning to make its way toward somewhere deeper (within).
One day, the man came upon an angel and a horse resting and talking beneath a tree. “Why am I myself and not you? Why am I here and not there?” they wondered.
The angel knew the hardships of nations. The horse knew how to gallop steadily. It sensed, from magma to the universe, the dominion of borders on rocky peaks.
The man continued on his way, and as those seeds took root, he began to think about returning.
The body of work presented in Angelus Novus, a solo exhibition by painter Elías Santis, explores memory, displacement, and identity while revealing the very experience of creation. Within the paintings' narratives lies the conviction that we have both the capacity and the responsibility to intervene in what we inherit. The works suggest that we can transform our own history and the very matter in which our memory is inscribed.
In each canvas, we encounter textures where transparencies and traces of the creative process remain visible, in some areas even allowing the light of the canvas itself to emerge. The artist seeks to give the works, even the large-scale ones, a certain lightness, so the material does not impose weight but instead lets the atmosphere permeate the image.
A particular impulse brings together the work in this exhibition: with the same transparency in handling materials (whose processes and techniques remain evident), fragmented landscapes and scenes are presented with candor. They emerge from an intimate experience that also forms part of a collective memory of crossing territories.
From the intimate, enclosed space (the child beneath the table), we can move (flying above the bird) into expansive landscapes, with the Andes stretching before us as a reminder that we are not entirely predetermined. This, perhaps, is our own inner crossing of the Andes.
Natalia Matzner
October 2026
