Roberto Salas

Roberto Salas is a multidisciplinary visual artist/musician whose work addresses a wide breadth of traditional and experimental approaches. He earned his MFA degree from the University California San Diego during a time when the faculty was comprised of (including David and Eleanor Antin, Manny Farber, Jean-Pierre Gorin, Allan Kaprow) some of the most interesting conceptual thinkers of our time. Roberto has used his highly theoretical based education together with his Hispanic heritage and his passion for global travel and study of diverse art and culture as influence for his personal vision. His diverse works include large-scale public art pieces, multi/cross cultural musical performance and community projects involving inner city and underrepresented low-income youth. Mr. Salas also owns and directs Crossing Tracks Gallery in San Diego, California where he curates exhibitions and musical performances by regional, national and international artists and musicians. Whether it be a small musical gathering or a long-term public project, Roberto is self directed and passionately committed to his artistic vision.

His experience working within diverse cultural pockets and disenfranchised communities, such as in the Arctic Circle, in the deep south of Louisiana, in Bali, Indonesia, and Mexican villages, proves his adaptability to living and working in other cultures. Matter of fact, he thrives on the prospects. His personal work evolves through the adaptation and integration of mixed cultural iconography. His perspective on the world is both inclusive and celebratory.

Voyages of Life Series

As principal artist for the Open Spaces Project for San Diego Museum of Art I had the privilege of designing and painting in a studio complex for a year This time has resulted in 50 large scale paintings that reiterate a personal primordial obsession with natural geometric icons inspired by indigenous cultures. Is a result of further studies derived from the New World Old World series and it’s defenses of culture mitigations as representation in life experiences from birth to death in native traditions. Encapsulated vessels state of design carries the burdens of life, rites of passages, happiness and the mysteries of the underworld.

The repetition of a visual vocabulary made up of icebergs, canoes, stelas and tools are reinvented and explored through the mix media experiments of acrylic paint and coffee on a material called Pellon. The layered and transparent applications are intended to evoke memory and temporal journeys, to speak to the passage of time in seconds as well as centuries.

Mixed Media
Acrylic on Pellon
5′ x 8′