about me

Astor Milan Salcedo is a Spanish-born artist of Colombian descent, based in Hamburg.

He began his career in photography and documentary film before turning increasingly to painting. That background still shapes the way he works. He observes, collects and remembers, then takes things apart.

They are pictorial stitches in time, chronicles of life, sentimental ballads.

His paintings are built slowly. Layers are added, covered, scratched into or removed. Earlier marks often remain visible. Some works begin with a clear idea, others develop through the process of painting itself. Salcedo is interested in that point where control starts to give way to something less predictable.

Photography has never disappeared from his work. In his overpainted Polaroids, photographs become starting points rather than finished images. Paint, scratches and other interventions change what was originally recorded and leave something new in its place.

Whether working with a camera, on canvas or directly on a wall, Salcedo is drawn to traces: things seen, places remembered, fragments of history and the marks people leave behind.