Lyle O. Reitzel Gallery (LOR Arte Contemporáneo) in Santo Domingo, presents “De Güibia a Boca Chica,” by Andalusian, DR-based artist Santiago Ydáñez, opening on September 3, 2026.
Description (by Miguel de Mena): “The paintings of Santiago Ydáñez (Jaén, 1967) possess that strange ability to immerse us in multiple spheres, to pull us in like a magnet. His strokes are like words tied to many others, an avalanche, a chorus, sometimes even a desolate whale song if the Caribbean is far away. Now we enjoy an immense opening with his Dominican “becoming” [his Dominican experience]: there is a transparent thread linking old territories, revealed in the usual large formats of an artist who will never abandon his enchanted flutes.
Embracing the Caribbean, these images shared in this major exhibition at Lyle O. Reitzel Contemporary Art propose so many journeys that there is no safe harbor from which to depart. We are in the presence of a Spanish visual artist who has taken up residence here. The piercing azure blue never ceases to seduce, the freshness of so many waters he has navigated with his pen as an oar. And here comes his innate alchemist’s passion. He searches and selects. If El Greco and Bacon were able to sit at his table long ago, now the artist adds other guests to his feast of color.
Repeating the mantra that transcendent art is the one on which we cannot agree, because there will always be something for every audience, we will say that Ydáñez follows in the footsteps of renowned traveling painters, from Canaletto in Dresden to Vela Zanetti in Ciudad Trujillo itself. If there is a route to Santiago, there is also another that Santiago himself is forging.
Santiago Ydáñez allows himself to be seduced by an ancient sun, which he manages to bring to life. The painter becomes a translator, commentator, and participant in this infinite table of the image. We know it: behind every fruit, tree, or table lie countless fruits and trees seen and reproduced by other artists, and so on ad infinitum, back to the beginning of time. Upon arriving in the Dominican Republic, this Andalusian master engages in a dialogue that is unprecedented. Drawing on photographic records of Kurt Schnitzer’s work, he creates, recreates, and hangs on the wall wide pathways for entry and exit, ours and now everyone’s…”
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