Juan Manuel Salas (b. 1992, Guadalajara, Mexico) is a visual artist exploring the intersection between traditional painting and the digital archive. Compelled by "poor images"-banal, low-resolution, or anonymous fragments found online-which he treats as raw material, Salas interrogates themes of memory and estrangement across canvases. Salas approaches the canvas as an archaeological palimpsest, where the final work is built through the accumulation and erasure of layers. By transforming digital debris into a tactile experience of gestures and traces, his practice seeks to create a painting that is pierced by multiple temporalities, where the past and the contemporary coexist as a ghostly symptom.
Manuel Salas is based in New York, where he is pursuing an MFA in Studio Art at Hunter College (CUNY). His studies are supported by the Fundación Jumex Arte Contemporáneo Scholarship and the APCE Grant (Support for Art and Culture Professionals for Graduate Studies Abroad). He holds a BFA in Visual Arts from the University of Guadalajara and has completed academic residencies at Rennes 2 University in France and Air-Montreux in Switzerland.
Throughout his career, he has been a two-time recipient of the FONCA Young Creators grant and was awarded first prize at the José Atanasio Monroy National Biennial. Salas has exhibited his work individually at CURRO Gallery (Guadalajara), SINDICATO (Guadalajara), and the Sinaloa Art Museum (MASIN). His work has also been featured in group exhibitions at venues such as Pequod Co. (CDMX), Karen Huber Gallery (CDMX), and in international group shows in London and Switzerland.