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Nestor Sanmiguel Diest

Spanish artist Nestor Sanmiguel Diest’s art practice has developed a nuanced, idiosyncratic visual language shaped by a voracious interest in literature and philosophy. Sanmiguel Diest constructs his paintings and works on paper as palimpsests, alternately layering strata of found materials like magazine clippings, newspapers, industrial reports, mail, formulas, and texts atop one another in interplay with layers of ink, paint, graphite, solvents, and ballpoint pen. He wields superimposed layers of information as screens, simultaneously revealing and hiding a succession of pictorial stories or texts. Sanmiguel Diest‘s at times hermetic and highly personal conception of art has resulted in a nuanced vocabulary of methodologies and symbols. Like German artist Hanne Darboven, who employed personally derived numerical systems in the creation of her artworks, Sanmiguel Diest‘s paintings and drawings have an algorithmic quality. However, if we consider an algorithm to be a finite process with a fixed symbolic vocabulary governed by precise instructions, then Sanmiguel Diest‘s algorithms are unstable, constantly stuttering and re-aligning themselves as the repetition of one process unlocks new, unpredictable effects.

Nestor Sanmiguel Diest (b. Zaragoza, 1949) lives and works in Aranda de Duero. After years of working in relative isolation, Sanmiguel Diest ‘s work was the subject of a comprehensive retrospective at the MUSAC, Leon, in 2007. Since then, he has participated in exhibitions at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, and Fundação Serralves, Porto. His work is included in the collections of institutions such as the MACBA, Barcelona; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía; and MUSAC, Leon, as well as prominent private collections internationally.

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