Light in the Sculptures of Tomás
BY JÁlvaro Suescún T.
CRÍTICO DE ARTE | BARRANQUILLA, COLOMBIA
July 16, 2026
Returning to Colombia, coming from Alicante, in Spain, Tomás Salazar exhibits his recent sculptural work at the Galería Hacienda Castilla in Risaralda.
His works originate from thin sheets of blued iron, cold-cut and cold-bent, employing mechanical presses and other workshop resources, to achieve wonderful expressions with perfect curves and clean angles that unfold their tensions and those that hang between the forms and the void. It is a dynamic game of planes with which he develops a technical approach that transforms into abstract art. Already in the exhibition hall, and supported by the change of light and point of view, he invites viewers to stimulate their perception in a constant dialogue with matter and space.
Tomás is an artist in development with captivating overtones of veteran experience, bold before difficult challenges, obstinate in the great value of his artistic presence; he contrasts the intuitive and subjective of solid matter to confer upon them an appearance that subjugates before the preciousness of forms. He obtains art pieces that are endowed with great aesthetic purity, so that it can be affirmed with a certain dose of sensitivity that it competes with high-quality jewelry. No different conclusion can be reached because the sinuous distinctions stand out to magnify his work, even in those where, anticipating the behavior of the metal weathering outdoors, he adds to its realization the layer of rust that is inevitable, and adds it like the patina in bronze to provide his sculptures with an immortal state.
With seasons of recognition in Italy and Spain, and assimilating the Colombian abstract sculpture of Edgar Negret, Eduardo Ramírez Villamizar, and John Castles, masters who have transformed Latin American metal sculpture, which serve him as a source of inspiration to advance in the combination with great rigor of geometric forms, and in the ideas of constructivism with industrial mastery, creating these flashing pieces, of pure and angular lines. It must be for some reason that, in his sculptural advancement until now, and in a certain way, almost obliquely, connoisseurs observe a certain particular influence of Castles, a prominent reference of sculptural modernism in our country, and a bridge between the great masters and contemporary generations.
For the sublime respect for his work, for the discipline, for the management of tensions and the flexibility of iron to create elegant abstract forms, and, above all, because he is clear about his goals, Tomás Salazar is a great artist; his process and his recent exhibitions confirm it more and more each time.
