Sometimes it all begins with a walk. Not with an idea, nor with a sketch, but with something as simple as looking at the ground. Picking up a leaf, a seed, a shape with no clear purpose. In Daniel Salorio’s case, that intuitive gesture is the origin of a body of work that has spent almost two decades transforming plant matter into what he defines as ‘botanical sculptures’.
We meet in Santa Gertrudis, very close to the charming Estudio Laterna, where he has just taken down his latest exhibition on the island. The pieces are gone, but the sensation remains of having come into contact with living forms suspended in the air, somewhere between the organic and the dreamlike.
Salorio didn’t study art. Nor did he want to. “I was absolutely rubbish at drawing,” he says. His journey began in music, as a percussionist, with training in Cuba and Brazil, and projects such as the group Livika or the current TranceUntes, where he blends organic rhythms with a performance style that straddles live and electronic music. But his artistic language was born in Ibiza, many years ago, during a summer in a house lost in the middle of the countryside. “There was a lot of downtime and a very special garden,” he recalls. He began playing with plant debris, constructing tiny insects. And something clicked.
Since then, his process has hardly changed. It all begins outside the studio. In the countryside, in a garden, on a journey. Salorio collects objects that catch his eye because of their shape, texture or an intuition that is hard to explain, and gathers them without yet knowing what they will become. In his studio, organised into transparent boxes, these pieces await the moment when they will be assembled. With hardly any intervention. Without forcing it. Letting the form emerge. “I hardly touch the organic part at all,” he explains. His work consists more of joining than transforming, of respecting each original structure so that, when combined, it generates something new. That is where what he calls the “metaform” appears, a figure that the eye recognises, but not entirely. A bird, an insect, a fish. Or something completely different. That ambiguity is part of his language. “Our brain naturally completes reality,” he says. And in that interplay between what we see and what we think we see lies the power of his work. His universe feeds on that constant observation. Sometimes almost obsessively. He is fascinated, for example, by the structure of certain seeds. The coconut palm, he explains, has an enormous seed that rarely reaches the ground intact. When it does, he transforms it into large-scale pieces: whales up to two metres long constructed from a single plant element.
But there is also a legacy in his art. His grandfather and great-grandfather were painters, the latter with works in the Prado Museum. His grandfather showed him that art is everywhere, painting on a paper tablecloth in a restaurant, on the stones on the beach, or in the colours one sees whilst walking. “In a way, I owe him a certain way of seeing,” he acknowledges.
Although he does not define himself as an ecological artist, his work inevitably awakens a sensitivity towards nature. It has happened to him more than once: someone visits an exhibition and, days later, tells him that they now look at the leaves in their garden in a different way.
Today, his work is regularly exhibited in Madrid galleries such as Materna and Herencia, next to the Royal Botanical Gardens, or The Romanach, whilst outside Spain his work has found a natural home in spaces such as Atelier Manos, where he presented an installation comprising dozens of suspended birds that seemed to fly through the exhibition space. His work is also on display at the Museo del Objeto Encontrado (Museum of Found Objects) run by the Antonio Pérez Foundation in Cuenca. His network of contacts has developed organically. Instagram, in his case, also plays a key role: his highly visual work works particularly well in that format. At the same time, he continues to work from his studio, where he also sells directly. Because, as he himself says, the life of an artist today involves doing everything: creating, photographing, managing, shipping.
His creative world is inexhaustible. A single plant can give rise to an infinite number of pieces. A leaf that falls in one place or another changes its shape, its texture, its story. Added to this is his interest in travelling to places such as Guatemala or, soon, Costa Rica, where he discovers new forms and structures.
In an age dominated by digital technology and artificial intelligence, his work connects with something different. Slower, more physical, more real. “Before, this was seen as a bit hippyish; now I’m authentic,” he remarks with a touch of irony. Perhaps that is why he is enjoying a particularly sweet spell. Though without losing sight of the uncertainty that always accompanies the craft. “There are times when you sell a lot and others when you sell nothing,” he admits. The key, he says, is not to lose your balance: sell, yes, but without betraying the process.
Because, in the end, it all comes back to that initial gesture. Going out for a walk. Looking. Gathering. And letting nature, with all its intelligence and adaptability, work its magic.
