Martín Nuñez at the Landing

In the small back gallery at the Landing, artist Martín Nuñez unfolds a mystical surrealist world in which fantastic creatures commune with humans in a technicolored dream space. The exhibit is titled “Across the Paradise” and is curated by Michael Slenske. The exhibition is an interspecies romp in which amphibians, aliens, humans, and animals become intermixed, commingled and anthropomorphized.

One work, titled “Saturno,” relates directly to Francisco Goya’s infamous painting, “Saturn Devouring his Son.” In the mythology, Saturn ate his children for fear of being overthrown. Goya’s rendering of Saturn is bloody, brooding, and rendered in shadowy colors. Yet in Nuñez’ rendering, Saturn sprouts rainbows, and a skateboarding alien-like creature cruises casually by in the foreground.

Nuñez says in the press release, “I use my painting to escape from all the madness and chaos around me, to peek into another dimensional reality, because our reality is often much madder and more chaotic.”

Curator Michael Slenke adds in a short gallery walkthrough video, “it seemed poignant at this moment to deal with the type of surrealism that’s about sort of embracing the strange or the other.”

Although work in a surrealist genre might be considered escapist or fantasy, Nuñez gives us a vision of an intersectional future, where barriers and divisions make way for community and play.

Check out a 3D walkthrough of the exhibition, or visit by appointment.

On view: July 22–August 29, 2020 (open by appointment)