In conversation with Antonio Santin exploring illusion absence and the sculptural depths of paint
Antonio Santin’s paintings are hypnotic feats of craftsmanship, where oil paint takes on the illusion of woven texture, depth, and sculptural presence. Best known for his rug series, Santín transforms the traditional canvas into a tactile, almost architectural surface through a highly innovative process involving pneumatic extrusion and sfumato layering. Each piece, taking up to a year to complete, pushes the boundaries of realism and abstraction, inviting viewers into a sensorial experience that’s as much about perception as it is about paint.
Originally working with the human figure, Santin gradually shifted focus to the ornate patterns of rugs—what he calls “figurative paintings without a figure.” This transition marked a conceptual deepening, using absence as a way to explore presence, illusion, and psychological weight. His work draws from classical traditions while subverting them, using color and shadow not just to decorate, but to define space and emotion.
Your rug paintings are feats of both precision and patience, each demonstrative of your meticulous labor. Could you illuminate the conceptual and technical evolution of a single piece, from its beginning to its final form?
Oil paint has been around for centuries, yet nobody applies this medium quite as I do; it’s a real innovation. My technique has evolved tremendously, slowly over the years, to become something rare and unmistakable. To achieve this degree of precision I use pneumatic extrusion and fine needles. The final phase involves me adding a semitransparent sfumato that transforms patina into a shadow system, it’s right there when craft sublimates into an unexpected illusion. Each work easily takes a full year from start to finish. The painting is completed inside the viewer’s mind, using perception as a consolidating sculptural medium.
Early in my career I was closely involved with figurative painting, delving into notions of eroticism and the inanimate, fetichism and darkness. I was exploring the human body as a distorted object, surrounded by other items and belongings, while flirting with the aesthetics of a crime scene as an extended commentary on Millai’s Ophelia. Back then, the tactile viscosity of oil painting already served me as a vehicle to convey the physical characteristics of the organic and inorganic materials I was depicting.
However, I gradually lost interest in the main subject matter, fearing that my own dexterity was dictating my subsequent steps. At some point I felt the urge to ignore the human figure, and that’s why one day I got rid of it, by sweeping it under the rug. I remember vividly the impression I had when I looked trough my lenses at that bulky carpet; the image was beautiful and dark, but humorous. I realised at that moment, I was going to be painting rugs – figurative paintings without a figure.
One must have the discipline to push a decent idea until its final consequences. I’ve spent years working on this, trying to determine the best expression of this initial concept, and how to go about painting it. Like many other artists, eventually my object of reference simply became an excuse to explore the medium and nature of abstract painting. I have also come to understand that these rugs are just an elaborate excuse to define what we cannot see, which is really my object of desire.
I produce in my studio unique designs that expand the vocabulary of what a rug can be, proprietary patterns that only exist in my practice. The process of creating the final image is quite intuitive, an interplay between photography and ethreal sculpture that yields a temporary structure. Once I have accurate information on how the pattern warps into a third dimension, this allows me to create a map that will become the extruded core of the ultimate illusion.
When I started working on this series I soon realised how limited one’s life is, and the importance of collaborating. I started trying out different versions of an artist workshop and refined it into what’s today, something akin to an oil paint loom, where my hands have multiplied and a process of trial and error becomes an exponencial trove of experimentation indispensable to enhancing my vision.
It can be observed how deeply rooted your practice is in classical traditions such as tenebrism and chiaroscuro. What compels you to engage with these historical techniques?
It just feels natural; it is possible that I just couldn’t help it. I was trained as a sculptor and probably will always feel the need to experience the physical presence of whatever I’m reproducing – light and its playful darkness really does the job there.
What is your perspective and philosophy on how reality is portrayed in paintings?
Depicted reality will always be a compounding deception. It’s a good vehicle though, as it defines a playground for paint to express itself. My paintings are often categorised as realism or hyperrealism, yet I found these terms constraining. My proposal goes beyond that, somehow more real than reality itself, and it’s much more than tricking the eye because it also tricks the body. I don’t really follow any trend, and nobody inspired me to work like this.
There are subtle dimensions here that make reality subjective, for example the absence of the individual is an integral part of the work, what we can’t see is what holds reality together, there’s an apparent physical weight, which is psychological. The imagery I offer explores the boundaries between beauty and alienation, that what we cannot see is being questioned, even about its very existence, which makes pinning down reality rather elusive.
Trompe loeil is a genre that has come and gone, in and out of fashion. I use its principles to contain both my narrative an understanding of painting, yet I abandon it with my decision of recreating color ornamentation as a sculptural relief, something that deviates from the textile reference that I use as inspiration. Deep fakes and everything that enables AI mark an energetic renaissance of tromp loeil, I’m just trying to anchor it in a physical realm.
There’s another factor, which is the insane amount of work each artwork requires, much more than weaving a real rug. The fact that it’s such a time consuming practice doesn’t necessarily imply a higher value, yet it does exert some sort of pressure on the viewer, perhaps a kind of vertigo, definitely a very tangible feeling.
Tell us how you got started in your artistic journey and where you envision yourself in the distant future?
At some point I made a U turn from finance into fine arts, I had a strong feeling that I wanted to make a living with my hands. Fast forward, I’ve been living exclusively off my art over the past 20 years, playing with public sculpture, large scale portraits, floating carcasses, human still lives and my most consistent series, the rugs.
Looking back I see threads connecting all my aesthetic decisions and a vague instinct of what’s missing, what I probably don’t want to encounter, whose side effects are already quite entertaining, somehow similar to the gravitational pull of dark matter; unexplainable but undeniable. My intuition can feel it inside of me like something tucked, a chrysalid or cocoon, which is as well a gift wrapped in a straitjacket, somehow resembling a banana.
Since you have studied in both Athens and Madrid, how would you say these landscapes have influenced your work? In both a cultural context and aesthetic context?
In Athens I learnt that a great sculpture could roll down a hill without breaking, and how to make a Spanish omelette. In Berlin I became a professional artist, testing the limits of how much I was ready to give up in order to chase my dreams, and also how to make the perfect paella, the one you could eat for the rest of your life. I guess I learnt the rules in Germany, and how to break them in New York, where I was also revealed the true meaning of everlasting love when a homeless person told me that while there were many transient feelings in a relationship, in the end there’s only one voice left, and we should make sure it’s the voice we want to keep hearing.
Madrid is my backbone, my sense of humor. Now that I live here, Prado museum is my therapist, whenever I’m disoriented Van der Weyden is there to hold my hand while Goya sings a cynical lullaby.
It is quite astounding to witness the interplay of scale and detail in your work is remarkable. Do you envision pushing the boundaries of your practice into larger immersive installations or perhaps exploring other media?
I think what I do doesn’t fit well in traditional genre categories. To put it simply, I describe my artworks as paintings because its building material is oil paint on canas, but the result transcends the definition of painting, expanding it into a collision course against sculpture, creating an object as an aftermath. I like to think that colour is the ultimate frontier, it doesn’t matter what type of sculpture we’re considering, colour will always be its limit, the final layer, and our first contact.
So yes, why not, too many things live in my imagination and I might need to eventually emancipate them into corporeal beings.
Standing before one of your paintings, the viewer is drawn into an uncanny tension between surface and depth, tactility and illusion. What emotional or intellectual response do you hope to elicit?
At this point I’ve seen a wide spectrum of different reactions, from people on their knees to people looking at my work with absolute disdain, neither extreme is relevant. I always wanted to make art that’s a punch in your face, something you didn’t see coming and challenges you. I do my best to elude neutrality; there are many layers of meaning that the viewer has to go trough before accepting my proposal. Of course from afar is magical, like augmented reality assaulting your senses, but when you’re closer to the painting, there’s a tactile exuberance that is intoxicating and overwhelms perception.
I prefer a sensual world over an intellectual one. The effect is like something out of a Jose Luis Borges story, detail spiralling inwards way beyond your ability to absorb it (*Glenn Adam), each work is a decadent optical illusion of realistic and fantastical proportions (*Erica Silverman), that’s the type of conversation I like.
As painting continues to evolve in the contemporary landscape, what do you find most exhilarating about its future?
Painting as a medium cyclically dies, and still, so many people say in front of my paintings that they have never seen anything like this, I hear it again and again. Painting will always be around, it’s an atavistic nostalgia, a way to continue the conversation our ancestors initiated in those caves.
We need it to express and experience a primal and unrestricted part of our selves, as a bodily reaction rather than just a visual exposure. It is true that on its periodical reinvention, it clearly shows symptoms of convenient amnesia, still, the faintest pencil mark will always last longer than any of us.
All images courtesy of Antonio Santin
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