Andrés Silva Vignoli.

My work is a call to slow down and look again.

In an age of swipes, reels, and algorithmic distraction, I return to the act of attentive observation, not as nostalgia but as quiet resistance. My paintings invite the viewer into a slower kind of seeing, one rooted in the visible and the embodied. Before we relied on digital tools and genetic data to understand the natural world, we looked closely — at colour, form, and gesture. I draw from that tradition, not to idealize the past, but to reclaim the act of looking as a meaningful way of connecting to the world around us.

I create intricate compositions that blend natural history with urban landscapes, myth, and memory. Birds, flowers, and place-specific flora and fauna become not just subjects but actors in fragile, symbolic ecosystems. Many of the species I depict are endemic, introduced, threatened, or extinct. They serve as markers of human intervention and displacement.

At the heart of my work is a deep preoccupation with genius loci, the spirit of place, and with the queer longing to belong somewhere, to escape somewhere, or to disappear altogether. My paintings map that desire. They are part taxonomy, part elegy, part hallucination. Through them, I explore queerness not only as identity but as a way of seeing, one attuned to beauty, danger, and contradiction. Themes of addiction, escapism, pleasure, and loss thread quietly through the work.

A small rubber duck often hides in my compositions. It is a reclaimed symbol of queerness, drawn from the Panamanian slur pato, once used to shame gay men. In my work, the duck reappears as a strange, bright survivor — absurd, buoyant, and free to migrate.

These are not neutral images. They are invitations to linger, to notice, to grieve, to yearn, and perhaps to find orientation in a world increasingly dislocated and sped up.

Architettura UNIFI 2012

Royal College of Art Painting 2025

Contact Information

contact (at) andressilva.eu

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