Madison Gallery is pleased to announce Soaring Nature: an exhibition of new works from Bogota, Columbia - based, Santiago Parra. The artist’s third solo show with the gallery highlights a series of large - scale emotive monochromes, on view from 16 November to 9 January 2024.

Soaring Nature captivates with its raw, instinctual energy and profound exploration of abstract image-making. Parra's expansive monochromes, distinguished by their striking, emotive black linework, attract viewers to engage with the wild, feral spirit beneath human consciousness. visual model with texture and fluidity of movement, created by swirls and undulations of black paint, distinguishes them in different ways. The bold, expressive black linework reminiscent of Franz Kline's canvases and Richard Serra's charcoal drawings inspire Parra's large-scale monochromes, which present Parra's natural being. Parra's art is a beautiful enigma, a mystery of his subconscious that speaks for itself through the untamed brushstrokes. He is not particularly looking to "express" himself but to open what can't be expressed and let that energy drive him. An animal-like instinct that urges him to move across the canvas without direction, just notion. With no barriers in the way of acting, Parra's aesthetic explores and questions the essence of abstract image-making, becoming a translation of the nature of being human onto a canvas. “As humans, we live within the constraints of thoughts. It’s something we learn from a very young age: the important distinctions between good and evil, the correct ways to act, how to contain or control our instincts, and how to judge and archive all the overwhelming emotions that convey our own humanity. Thought not only directs our patterns and ways of behaving day to day, but it has become like a second skin that covers our animality. So much so that it is strange to think of ourselves as animals, simple mammals with a developed brain—a brain that thinks and thinks and thinks… But behind, within the body that thinks, lies this organic and natural being whose laws are not determined by ideas, that fierce or undomesticated animal within. When I see the paintings of Santiago Parra, I can feel the link with that natural being, with that part of me that is free and indomitable, that flows and contorts. There is a connection in his paintings with that part of thought that is hidden, those thoughts that are not a link but a part of nature, that beautiful soaring nature that is a part of us.” - Lucía Morón 2024