sanitary connections

In the Chilean plastic arts scene, Salineros stands out for his important contribution to the renovation of sculptural language. In more than fifteen years of uninterrupted work, the artist has explored new visual and communicative possibilities, propitiating from sculpture a contemporary, eloquent and incisive approach to our daily practices of habitation in culture. 
It should be pointed out, at this point, that Chilean sculpture has been characterized by a certain delay with respect to the international developments of the discipline, if compared to what happens with painting, photography or installation. In general, Chilean sculptors still show traces of a modernist conception of the object, as a piece of contemplation closed in itself, which aspires to immortality and remains oblivious to the contaminations of the environment. On the other hand -and within this same tendency- the great majority of sculptors continue to vindicate the manual imprint as an index of virtuosity and the "noble" materials traditionally linked to the craft. It is a sculpture that wants to be the solid and enduring image of a discourse that oscillates between self-expression and representation.

In contrast to this trend, since the late nineties a new type of sculptor has emerged who explores materials and imagery from the everyday world, from consumption or from the industrial sphere; dismissing the value of self-expression in favor of a more explicit relationship with the environment and replacing the contemplative attitude of the object with a notion of experience that involves the viewer. The rigorous and always vital proposal of Salineros is situated in this current, as a voice that from sculpture seeks to restore contact with the world, inviting the viewer to an emotional and linguistic game at the same time or, more simply, to be part of the meaning of the work.
Salineros' sculpture appeals to ideas, materials and visualities that, in some way, are already in the imaginary of the common spectator. His sculpture opens up and allows itself to be modified, as if to feel alive it needs to be "violated" in its sacredness.  She asks to be disrespected, precisely to be able to contact the other through play, pleasure, ambiguity and humor.

From his earliest works, Salineros pushes this "exit" to the world by taking the object out of the plinth and placing it on the floor or in the common space of the viewing experience, as an element that interrogates the body and its environment, taking charge of its symbolic and social connotations. In 2000, he carried out a large project at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chiloé, an island located in southern Chile that still maintains many of its cultural traditions. For this exhibition he investigates the island's own constructive models, closely linked to its natural resources. One of the most developed craft techniques is basketry, in which vegetable fibers are woven to make household utensils, baskets and sacks. Reinterpreting this imagery, Salineros builds giant woven wooden eggs and reintegrates them into the landscape, leaving (and here "leaving" makes sense) the museum room. Hollow pieces of openwork skin: exposed to erosion and the affectations of their environment. In these works-and in several others that he will make later-the empty space is a constituent part of the body of the object. In this way, Salineros has never postulated images of monolithic and closed solidity, but has always installed "the open" as a character of his work. 

In other projects -such as the one at the Matucana 100 Cultural Center- Salineros once again recovers an image of cultural experience, such as the spinning top: an ancient wooden toy (now on the verge of extinction) that in our tradition has occupied long hours of children's leisure time. It is a handmade toy that is thrown and spins on its axis, describing in its trajectory an infinite number of shapes in constant transformation. Salineros photographically recorded the different moments of this parabola and translated each form into a large-scale sculpture. Thus, a series of volumes emerged, again constructed as hollow fabrics, appealing to the ephemeral instants of an emotional memory deeply rooted in the observer.

His current work is the product of a greater complexity and radicality in this same search. Now, Salineros turns to the imaginary of the toilet, aesthetically reinterpreting forms and mechanisms found in the bathrooms and kitchens of today's homes. Just as he previously explored the constructive models of basketry or the movement of the spinning top, this time he reinterprets the connective mechanics of the toilet. This shift from construction to connection cannot leave us indifferent. Salineros, in this work, manages to convert his desire for connection with the other into the structural operativity of his work. Elements such as the stainless steel drain, the plug and the chains (that is to say, precisely those elements that "are not" the sculpture) come to occupy a prominent place in the functioning of the work. The sculpture is not only presented as a statement open to multiple interpretations, but also minimizes its enunciative force in favor of the pure relationship. Thus, the pieces become part of an interconnected story, in which the connectors (which in grammar would be conjunctions) constitute the synapse where, effectively, the communicative relationship takes place. 

It is interesting to observe how the operativity of the object is replaced by the operativity of the relationship. Here the volumes that refer to the idea of the toilet are obviously dysfunctionalized, in the manner of a parodic joke. If in its original context the toilet is an indispensable element to satisfy basic needs, in this displacement it becomes an absolutely useless object, which takes its condition of deceptive visuality to paroxysm. But, unlike what happens with volumes, chains, pipes, plugs and drains do respect their original functionality: the drain opens; the plug closes; the chain and the pipe join. This connection is not presented as a whimsical invention, but as a consequence of necessity: the plug can only be fitted into the drain. It is in this relationship of evident necessity that Salineros situates an increasingly active role for the spectator, who is called upon by the work, precisely, to play with the mechanism, putting the pieces in place or perverting the proposal. 

A third reading speaks of the toilet as the space where bodily secretions are processed. The choice now acquires its full meaning. One could say that the history of Salineros' sculpture is the history of objects that came down from the plinth to meet the other, that became vulnerable and everyday, to speak the language of the world and its banal emotions. Open, gregarious and promiscuous, her sculpture constructs itself as a body in relation to the body of the "other". A body that, like any other, is subjected to the wear and tear of time, a body that joins other bodies and that in that game runs a risk. A body that is nothing more than a body and, perhaps for that reason, laughs at itself.