The Salt Exchange

Fourteen months, thirty-two colours, and the most populated picture Serrano has made. A market at the hour when the light is horizontal: sixty-odd figures, none of them detailed, all of them doing something specific. He builds crowds the way a good illustrator builds them, by getting the silhouettes right and refusing to describe a face, and the result is that the eye assigns everyone an errand. The palette is restricted to thirty-two entries and eleven of them are variations of the same dusty ochre, which is how the air in the picture gets its weight. Nothing here is nostalgic. It is simply a hard way to paint, done well.