SAMUEL SALCEDO (Barcelona, 1975). "Lluis", 2004. Oil on panel. Signed and dated on the back. Measurements: 100 x 100 cm. Samuel Salcedo began his artistic training at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Barcelona and at the Manchester Metropolitan University, Department of Fine Arts. Despite adopting different techniques in his artistic work, he defines himself as a sculptor, in his own words: "The term plastic artist sounds a bit bombastic to me. Although for a long time I only exhibited paintings, my food work and my social security number was sculptor. Now I keep saying it because, sometimes, the name of visual artist puts you in a context in which many people don't know how to place you, especially people outside the art world". His work is characterised by portraying human beings from a point of view in which their emotions are magnified and even ridiculed. Through a completely contemporary aesthetic, Samuel Salcedo presents the reactions produced by different states of mind. Exploring the field of humour to which he alludes, "I have been developing it because I understood that it helps to attenuate a certain aggressiveness in my work and to place it in the context I feel it needs to be in. There can't be only aggressiveness, there can't be, there has to be both, and this is precisely what is disconcerting". Samuel Salcedo has had several solo exhibitions including the 3Punts Gallery in Barcelona and Gemenie Spezies, Galerie Robert Drees in Hannover 100Kubik Gallery in Cologne, the Fernando Latorre Gallery in Madrid and the Frédéric Got Fine Art Gallery in Paris among others.