(1975, Barcelona), www.samuelsalcedo.com
Studies of Fine Arts at the University of Barcelona and at Manchester Metropolitan University, Department of Fine Arts.

Salcedo avoids a solemn tone and represents as a dramatic comedy the matters that to other people would be tragic or even boring. And he does so with the joy of someone who is free of certain vanities that are the foundation of our pretentious society, with the clarity of someone who is free from self -deception and accepts the ridiculous part and the limitations of being human. In his work is that it conveys an extraordinary sense of freedom, partly because he dares to contemplate the human species with critical and self-critical distance, with an ironic vision on the most grotesque, ridiculous or naïve aspects of it, but always avoiding judgment from an alleged superiority. Salcedo not only makes use of this freedom of figurative representation. When portraying today’s human being, he also shows a complete liberation from any kind of hypocritical moralism, whether traditional, old, or those that are spread by a certain progressive way of thinking hindered by clichés.
For its technical virtuosity and sometimes transgressive contents, Salcedo's work could connect with Maurizio Cattelan or with hyperrealist artist Ron Mueck, but Salcedo does not focus on anecdote and impact. The meaning of his work is more ambiguous and is closer to Nietzsche: the recognition of reality, as a whole, including the worst and the ridiculous, the recognition of the all too human and the insufficiently superhuman in this pretentious little animal called man (or woman). Salcedo manages to represent the human being as an animal (he undresses him) and at the same time as a creature who needs distractions and gifts, as a deficient being who needs to buy additional objects: profane masks, fiction objects and psychological prostheses suitable for a post-natural being, substitutes maybe for what has been called the paradise lost.
Juan Bufill: Animal Thrills (Anaid Art Gallery Berlin)