Galería Tomás March is opening an exhibition of recent work by Fernando Prats (Santiago de Chile, 1967) on Wednesday March 11th 2009.

In geology, subduction is the process that takes place at convergent boundaries by which one tectonic plate moves under another tectonic plate, sinking into the Earth's mantle, as the plates converge. Subduction zones involve an oceanic plate sliding beneath either a continental plate or another oceanic plate. Chile is in fact a product of this geological phenomenon. Fernando Prats called his show “Subducción”, subduction in Spanish, to underscore the associations between the creative process and the process of transformation of the earth itself.

The works on view in “Subducción” are based on two geological phenomena existing in Chile. Firstly, the eruption of the volcano Chaitén, located ten kilometres to the northeast of the city of the same name in the south of the country; secondly, the geothermic phenomenon of the Tatio geyser field in the north of Chile. Broadly speaking, the exhibition seeks to continue developing a body of work that activates the painterly surface. Co-opting various different media, he wishes to expand the working dimension in painting, with smoke as the chief medium of activation in this process.

This is Prats’ first one-person show in Valencia. Educated at Escola Massana in Barcelona and the University of Chile, he has lived and worked in Barcelona since 1990. In 2006 he was awarded a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation scholarship and in 2003 he was artist-in-residence at Kunst-Station Sankt Peter in Cologne. Prats has had one-person exhibitions in Galería Antonio de Barnola, Barcelona (1994, 1998), Galería Joan Prats, Barcelona (1999, 2002, 2005, 2008, 2009), Galería Álvaro Alcázar, Madrid (2007), as well as in art centres and museums like Fundación Joan Miró, Barcelona (1995), Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes in Santiago de Chile (2004) and Casa de América, Madrid (2008), among others. Upcoming projects include an exhibition for the Chile triennial and an intervention for La Gallera in Valencia titled “To Catch on the Fly”.