The work of Iván Melnick carries out its trade from the position of the alchemist, for him the sublimation and construction through materials is a language in itself, and has as much or more power than the final image: “I work with the chemicals and the acid as a sorcerer. I transport myself to a remote past, I invoke the mystery and my fellow travellers. I usually draw for hours.”
Melnick's invitation is to complete the story in progress, to join that "etheric moment" that the artist captures in his epiphanies and where he pushes us to put together the before, the after and even remember an event we have never experienced.
In Melnick's work we are never left out of the scene, there is an almost mystical mystery that catches our eye. The impulse to build cinematographic frames is a seductive option, guessing the invisible character and all its actions worthy of suspicion. .To find the hiding place or the hidden one. To put together the fragments that are sought after and yet flee from their fellows. Identifying protagonists and defining actions is the opposite of what Melnick proposes, because the obvious has no place here. His work displays a multilayered chaos where at times we feel strangely familiar.
About his paintings the artist comments: "There is a process of conflict with the image, particularly with the face, a struggle with identity played on the materials. The serial composition and the portrait orientation contribute to the theme of identity, as if they were deteriorated passport photos, in which the authority can no longer recognise you". We are invited to search behind what we don´t know and yet we sense, and that search promises to be endless.
"I draw a line on the copper plate, engrave it, and my imagination runs wild. I am channeling very powerful ancient energies. I just draw in a sustained trance. I want to make remote, misty landscapes, full of passageways and darkness. I feel I haven't yet reached anything remotely culminated”
Iván Melnick , 1985 , Santiago de Chile.
He is a multidisciplinary artist who graduated from Finis Terrae University in Chile. He has developed his artistic work by an inner search revealed through matter.
He uses corrosive materials, he feels subordinate to the elements that burn, dissolve, age. He has a fascination for the occult.
He has exhibited in important museums in Chile and Germany, winning competitions and numerous distinctions.
A restless creator, his work extends to literature and music on which he is currently working, creating in his words "a dark but danceable musical project and a book of short stories".