BIOGRAPHY

Although best known for his work in film, Sebastian Silva (b. 1979 Santiago, Chile) has spent the majority of his life actively drawing and sketching. Inspired by a childhood of depicting characters under the influence and style of classic cartoonists and animators such as Tex Avery and Walt Disney, and moving toward more modern references such as Matt Groening (The Simpsons) and John Kricfalusi (The Ren & Stimpy Show), Silva presents The Elephant in the Room as his first foray into the world of visual arts. Having become increasingly bored with small sketches and doodles, Sebastian Silva has recently turned his visions on large format painting in an effort to become more physical and gestural in the work. The scale of the paintings allows the artist to embrace the sensuality of curved lines and exaggerated forms while the frantic energy found in his compositions leaves a palpable sensation of what the artist describes as “the frustration of horniness,” in which nothing in the moment of sexual arousement can satisfy one’s most primitive urges; “Nothing is ever enough…” After studying film at the Escuela de Cine de Chile, Silva made his directorial debut with the film La vida me mata in 2007. In 2009, he directed La nana, a feature film that went on to receive more than twenty international awards including the Grand Jury Prize - World Cinema Dramatic at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival, and was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the 2010 Golden Globes Awards. In 2013, he shot Nasty Baby, a film in which Silva himself portrays the protagonist, dealing with "the coexistence of a homosexual couple in Brooklyn, interested in having a child through artificial insemination of a mutual friend." The film was presented at the Berlinale 2015 where it won the Teddy Award for homosexual cinema.