A SPECIFIC SENSE OF IRONY!
Laos Salazar, is a very young art student born in Mexico City. He likes to be controversial. Trying to make artwork with a very specific sense of irony about social taboo’s like sexuality, social repressions etc. At first interested in graphic design, decided to move to visual and plastic arts. The use of sub-cultures visual aesthetics like punk, goth, BDSM, is to create a critic to social and cultural establishment.
KALTBLUT: Is mexico city inspiring for an artist? (how?)
Laos: Yes it is, the city is always moving and never sleeps, so many people from so many different cultural backgrounds living together in a very small space. It’s something very interesting to watch, the old traditions mix with the contemporary society perfectly, we have a lot of museums (we are the city with the biggest number of museums in the world), parks monuments, market’s, a long list that goes on and on, but for me the people living here, the problems of my city and the context I live day to day, are what inspire me the most.
KALTBLUT: What’s your favorite subject and why?
Laos: I like to work with irony and criticism, underdogs and that kind of stuff, punks, sub-cultures that have a very interesting ideology, use images and change the meaning of those, I think my work as an artist is to make possible multiple points of view, I want to speak about what happen around me, my specific time and what bothers me, say something, and don’t stay silent.
KALTBLUT: Why do you chose illustrations to express yourself?
Laos: I use whatever I think helps to express what I want to express. Since I was a kid, I used to draw and use colors, it’s something natural to me, my parents always were giving me notebooks and pencils, and I was always drawing monsters and creepy creatures, I think that drawing is the most amazing tool to express yourself, you don’t have to be an artist, everyone can draw whatever he wants. It’s like a lucid dream, you can do whatever you want in this space.
KALTBLUT: What’s the importance of colours for you and is there any special meaning in the colours you use?
Laos: Everything in an image gives you some kind of information and colours are full of it, so it depends of what I want to say, and how is \ my selections of colours is going to look; I see it as a combination of composition and meaning; red can meaning alert, danger, passion, blood, so many things, it must be a balance between those. In this moment I’m using a lot of black and white (this works are still in process so I’m not showing it yet) and the well-known meanings, good, bad, devil, god.
Interview by Emma E. K. Jones
