Gonzalo García is a contemporary artist from Puebla. He currently lives and works in Mexico City. In his work, he explores and reinterprets customs that remind us of the concepts of death, vulnerability and tension.
The human body has been a recurrent topic in his work. His research began as rigorous anatomic studies and then evolved into a more abstract and conceptual form. Gonzalo is interested in the expressive strength of the poetic image, represented in symbolic dichotomies such as violence and delicacy. Visceral expressionism and artists such as Paula Rego, Cecily Brown and Edvard Munch have strongly influenced his work.
During the two occasions in which he was awarded the prestigious FONCA scholarship, Gonzalo centered his research in the analysis of Mexican violence from its fiction and not its historicity. During this timelapse, his work nurtured from references such as the black resin boxes decorated with bouquets that characterized interior design in the sixties. His visual language is characterized by dichotomies such as flesh and flowers, body parts repetition and fabrics, represented in a dim and gloomy color palette.
Gonzalo thinks of the titles of his paintings as a narrative guide. On occasions he takes up small canvases that allow him to have a more intimate contact with the paintings, and on others, great format canvases allow him to develop complex issues.
Gonzalo's collages and anatomic sketches
He currently works in a tapestry-like series, inspired in fictions from the decades of the forties and fifties in Mexico. This new series is the mix of all the topics and elements to which he has been loyal along his career. Delicate flower motives join with the bodily presences; like skin that detaches from the canvas into tridimensionality.
Delicate flower motives join with the bodily presences; like skin that detaches from the canvas into tridimensionality.
Gonzalo García, Estudio para un Incendio III, 2022, Oil on wood, 18h x 13w cm. Available: $200 USD
In her work, Antonia Alarcón explores the affective bonds of memory and empathy. In her practice of textile embroidery she seeks to narrate and highlight experiences through landscapes of multicolored fabrics.
We met with the artist in her studio to learn about her process of dyeing and embroidering with pigments and natural fibers, but also to understand the issues she addresses in her practice.
Where do the ideas for your embroidery come from?
I am working in a project I developed with a scholarship from the FONCA. It is called “Todos los pastos del mundo '' (”All the grasses in the world”) It is a mapping of migratory flows. On one side, it is about the visualization of hard data in a textile format. On the other side, it is about the vegetal migration, since the plants also have migratory conducts. I seek to turn the human migratory experience to metaphors through the vegetal migratory process, which I find pretty and cathartic.
In one of the last pieces that I made for this project; going back to the data visualization. I embroidered one stitch for every person that migrated from the state of Guerrero to work as a laborer.
What is your work process?
In the case of this project, I parted from the maps and its data. I analyzed the map of Guerrero and I noticed that 5600 people moved to Sinaloa, then I did 5600 stitches to represent each person and kept track of it in a notebook in case something interrupts me while I’m embroidering.
What I care most about the process, is the sensation that it produces , that you can see that something is happening, instead of thinking of it as just 5600 people, that it’ll be more than just a number. The effect given by the textures and relief of the stitches is for me a great advantage that complements the visualization of data. It is very real. Also the notion that exists in the collective thought that it is very laborious, gives it great affective force as well.
Actually, I think that the complexity of the textile process is very invisible in general. It is a very slow process, I can spend days or weeks dyeing, ironing the canvas, and making the hem. In general, when I begin embroidering, for me it is till death.
At times I enjoy just taking the fabric and improvising, but lately I’ve been experimenting a lot with the idea of the embroidered drawing. If you do bigger stitches, longer, shorter or in different directions, it gives the sensation that you are drawing. When I am fed up with investigation, I go to the park and just draw directly on the fabric, then I board it. I am very into the versatility of textiles, I think it is like drawing.
Tell us more about the development of this project?
Nowadays I have 5 of 10 maps that compose the series. I like to investigate, and even though at the start I didn’t know where to begin, I did some research and learned about the intense migration from Veracruz to Reynosa and from Chiapas to Quintana Roo. That’s how I carried out my project, because I realized there were other things I cared about the migration phenomenon than just numbers and maps.
I found that some towns in Zacatecas are now ghost towns because of emigration to the United States. Personally, I've never been to Zacatecas, but I looked up the effects of mining there. Based on photos and videos I imagined a landscape, thinking what would be the “color of Zacatecas” in a pigment.
Why did you choose embroidery as the main tool for your work?
It was really intuitive.
While I was studying plastic arts at “La Esmeralda”, I did a project about scars and freckles in the body. That's when I realized that my keloid healing had a very textile shape so I decided to embroider it. At that moment I had to leave Santiago because of a family emergency and I took this project with me. That too I think is very beautiful about it, you can fold it and take it with you.
For embroidery I use a hoop that belonged to my great grandmother, it’s very special to me and you can tell it has many years of use. Neither my grandmother nor my mom wove. They used to say “I do not weave because I am an independent woman” when they had to embroider newly born blankets or things like that. So when I started I used another hoop until one day my grandparent saw me and told me: “I have something for you, this was my mom’s”. He always had a strong textile culture, he loves embroidery and has plenty in his house. My grandmother also has a lot of rugs, so I feel that it is something very important to me. I even taught my mom how to stitch
In that case, how did you choose your color palette?
During my investigation, I focused a lot on the agave plant. I was hooked on how this plant migrated, that’s when I found that they do so by the hand of a bat, so what I did was extract a color palette from two typical agaves from Guerrero, that are el delgado and el papelote.
First I have to get resources to do the pigments. Sometimes I buy it directly in the haberdashery or at times I go to the park and collect vegetable matter myself, such as leaves, bark and seeds or organic products such as the avocado pit that has red and pink pigments. One advantage of this is that they keep a good smell after you’ve dyed. During a residency in Jilotepec I was searching for natural tints and learned to identify tones from natural sources.Indigo comes from the leaves of a plant that are cut, boiled and fermented so that the oxides come out blue, it is a lot of chemistry and I love chemistry. Sure, with beets, all the berries like strawberries, blackberries, all that.
Then to fix the colors I use soy milk and alum. Most of the fabrics keep the pigments inside their proteins, for example wool keeps its color very well.
There are many ways to achieve colors with natural products. The most common method is to boil the fabric in the same water in which the pigment was made and do several baths. I combine many species at the same time because I seek to obtain those stains of tones, not just one uniform color. I am very unorthodox at dyeing.
What is your dyeing process?
First, I have to get raw materials to make the pigments. Sometimes I buy them directly in stores. Sometimes I even go to the park and collect seeds, leaves, bark, or organic products: the avocado pit with reddish and pink pigments. An advantage of this is that they retain their good smell after dyeing. During a residency in Jilotepec, I did research I was researching on natural dyes and learned how to identify shades from natural sources. Indigo comes from the leaves of a plant that are boiled and left to ferment so that the oxide comes out blue, it is a lot of chemistry, and I love chemistry. Sure, with beets, all red fruits like strawberries, blackberries, all that.
Then to fix the pigments, I use soy milk or alum. Most fabrics retain the dye within their proteins; for example, wool holds color very well.
I prefer to use vegetable fibers; that's why I use soy milk. I boil the fabric in soy milk to acquire its proteins; this allows the color to be better fixed. It's a super long process. I can spend up to 3 hours boiling, that's why I used an electric stove for practicality. The same process can be repeated many times to achieve different shades of dyeing.
There are many methods to achieve colors with natural pigments. The most common way is to boil the fabric in the same water where the dye was boiled in and do several baths. I combine several spices simultaneously because I seek to obtain those marks of tones, not a uniform color. I am very unorthodox to dye.
How did you learn that technique to fix the pigments through proteins
Research, and by trial and error I learned how to use the soy milk and the alum. The first time I tried to do a natural dye, I boiled marigold flowers with salt because I thought that would fix the pigment and it worked. Then I tried curcuma and kept experimenting. Later on a friend of mine that knows about dyeing techniques sent me some texts to read more about the process. Here in Mexico there is an ancient tradition of experimental dyeing.
And, how did you learn to embroider?
I learned by myself.
I used to do art direction, and once I had a lot of curtain fabric to spare that I had used for a short film. I intuitively started to embroider and that was it.
At the end it is essentially to pass a needle through the cloth. You just have to take into account that all fabrics react differently, you have to be very careful and focus because humor also influences; if you are in a hurry or flustered, it will show in the product of your embroidery.
There is something about the hand work that I adore. A lot of artists work with seamstresses and that is okay, in my case, I wouldn’t know how to explain my ideas, mainly because of the variety of colors I use.
During the pandemic did you produce any art work?
At the beginning of the pandemic I had a bike accident in which I broke my right wrist so I was in rehabilitation for four months. I had to learn to knit with my left hand to keep producing during that period.
Now I can change hands when I’m tired. Also I began to give workshops via zoom, I really liked that because people are super generous with their personal process. I learn a lot about ideas that they have from their diverse formations. That’s why when people assist my workshops saying they don’t know how to embroider, I tell them to “relax and do whatever they want..”
I feel like the textile practice is very rebellious, my students end up doing incredible reflections with their works.
Don't miss out on Antonia Alarcon's work!
Mariana Paniagua's work focuses on abstract painting, using chaos as inspiration. She is interested in conveying a strong emotional response to her audience. Her process, defined by repetition, serves as an analogy between the act of erring and being defeated repeatedly by the human condition.
There is a dialectic of writing-erasing, breaking-pasting, painting-removing layers, a path in which Paniagua retraces her steps until she finds herself again in front of a blank sheet, which has been undone and rebuilt in many points of the piece's development.
We met the artist in her studio to learn about the themes that inspired her to dive into abstract practice and her creative process.
How does your process start when painting?
In general, I cover the canvas using gesso to fix a surface, and I start to draw from the imprimatur: first, I stamp, then I see the space. I make landscapes in layers of time, not so much of a specific place, for example, a landscape built of ruins, as the vestiges of some event.
Cuando todo se deshabite, 2021. Acrylic and oil on linen. 70h x 80w cm
What do you mean by layers of time?
Something fundamental in my process is to think about this body thing, the manual actions of this coming and going of cutting and pasting, sanding, erasing, etc., and how long these actions take. The painted surface is seen, but the weight of things and every moment of my life is also perceived. Because there are different days in which things happen in me, I wonder how to translate this aspect of time to the piece and be transmitted to whoever observes it.
How much are you interested in whether or not the viewer recognizes figures or elements in your paintings?
Lately, I have been more concerned about it being perceived as a formal abstract painting. I am interested in delving into many things about painting beyond how it looks. I feel like sometimes some types of abstract painting are because of the form. In general, I don't worry about people seeing what I'm thinking, but I am interested in that emotional impact. I like it when people tell me what they see; I am interested in what they find behind that form of a veil, that which conceals something that is still there.
As an abstract artist, which artists inspire your work?
For a while, I was very nailed with Bacon, with this issue of meat in a vacuum. I am very interested in Hilma af Klint, with this idea of abstraction that is not abstraction and how she makes diagrams and paints figuratively under certain logic. I think that has also influenced the way I see my painting; generally, everyone sees it as something abstract; for me, it is more like a landscape. I am interested in the figuration arising from the same process, not so much as representation.
We noticed that there are several paints with similar color palettes. What prompts you to select your color palette?
I select the palette based on the environment or atmosphere I want to generate; for example, I think a lot about light, sunrise, or sunset.
Do you take the colors and do a series?
Yes, when I come across something that impacts me, I need to do one. Now I am producing a series about the night; I am working with blues, thinking of the dark from different blue shades instead of black. It struck me how the sky is permanently dying and living, the same as with the sea.
For example, in this series I’m making, I wanted to start with a lot of light and then cover it with black afterward, leaving elements like the stars to emerge from below it, not as something superimposed. Beginning with pure lightness and then covering it as if black or blue were also material, not just shades of light.
What could you say is the main theme of your paintings?
Before I worked with the defeated or fallen human figure, with the human condition from the absurd, I began to make these figures, but later, I was interested in the space in which they were, and this became more abstract. I think everything from the light and the passage of time.
La caída 10, 2018. Acrylic on canvas. 150h x 150w cm
Christian Castañeda's work explores the intimate union between the natural and feminine. Recurrent symbols like serpents, hands, and leaves collide with creatures with an aura of mysticism that, through subtle gestures, guide us towards dreamlike and mysterious realities.
Castañeda is best known for her pure black and white line drawings informed by her craft as a tattooer. However, she works fluidly in various mediums and printing techniques. The color wasn't abundant until her last exhibition, New_on the block 3 at Machete Galería, presenting a series of full-color acrylic paintings. She recently began a series of works with different methods like cyanotypes and monotypes. Her latest drawings introduce natural pigments carefully applied to acid-free or Nepalese paper.
We caught up with the artist at her studio to learn how she combines her creative endeavor as a visual artist and tattooer and the joys of being an artist.
We constantly observe nature imagery intertwined with what appears to be body fragments of women. How do you come up with this relation?
My pieces are not restricted solely towards nature since part of the constant questions in my work revolve around the mystery of the creative force of the feminine.
I present women intermingling with the cosmos and the universe in many pieces, strolling between alternate worlds and imaginary worlds. As if these two forces - women and nature - merge to generate new spaces, without any of them losing their independence. When the women in my drawings and paintings connect with the universe, they move away from a passive condition.
I like to paint delicate, soft, and subtle shapes because fragility is not synonymous with weakness. There is a lot of strength and resistance in what is fragile (I am thinking, for example, of a cobweb and its material capacity to absorb energy).
When I paint a woman between these possible worlds, I immerse myself in the image, feeling strangeness and tranquility simultaneously. Precisely that state of contemplation is what I like to generate in my pieces.
What role do symbols play in your work?
My fascination for symbolism has caused me to recur to it in my drawings and tattoos constantly. And I do it because, through the symbol, coincidences of meanings from different sources like sociology, anthropology, mythology, and esotericism reveal. A sign can go beyond synthesis; there are multiple possible metaphors behind that poetic image. It is and has been an extraordinary science.
The Hecate ritual, 2020. Watercolor on acid-free paper. 21h x 14.80w cm
Can you tell us more about your process for your natural pigmentation drawings?
I have many sketchbooks; in this one, for example, I am drawing flowers. This one is where I put the excesses of watercolor, and I like how it looks, like abstract paintings. I also work with gouache or sometimes with collage. I have probably thousands of experiments, and some can turn into larger drawings.
To produce the reds, for example, I use hibiscus flowers. I start by boiling the flowers and experiment with different saturations until I reach the color. When I am pleased, I add a fixative. If I want a darker tone, I use a toner that can be lemon. If you do not put a fixative, it can fade through time. I save all these experiments in sketchbooks.
How long have you been experimenting with this process?
For two years, perhaps since the pandemic started. I like how the paint changes on the paper. I like the artisanal process.
Have you always worked in this media?
After I graduated, I started working in photography. I enjoyed photographing escort models, but later I began doing product photography for so long that I was tired of it. After that I started tattooing almost nine years ago.
What led you to become a tattoo artist?
At the time, I had many skateboarding friends who were very involved in the tattoo culture. For me, it was a different approach to drawing, but I think I also spent many hours alone, and I realized that I had a different approach to people.
What do you think led you to that?
Flow state. When I spend a lot of time doing an activity, it introduces me to a meditative state. I enjoy working with tattoos so much. I enjoy the connection between the machine vibrating and the ink being injected.
When do you think you feel "the flow state" the most?
I think when I have been tattooing for about 40 minutes and stop thinking about the image, just filling the shape. I feel merged with the image. That feeling lasts longer while tattooing than while painting. In painting, I always return to the rational part, thinking about the colors, etc. It's more frustrating for me.
Where do you think your works is going?
I am experimenting and jumping from watercolor to acrylic in small formats, gestural models, or installations, experimenting with encaustic, but I have been thinking about something more three-dimensional.
November 28th to February 28th, 2021
Curators: Humberto Moro and Andrés Valtierra with assistance from Regina Elías
OTRXS MUNDXS [Spanish gender neutral for “Other Worlds”] is a group exhibition that surveys and articulates the work of an heterogeneous, multicultural group of more than forty artists who work individually and collectively in Mexico City. Throughout four thematic sections (I. Capitalism and Domination, II. Seriality, Identity and Obliteration, III.Entropy, Speculation and Visualization, and IV. Body and Materiality), the exhibition presents recent works and special commissions, which reveal urgent discourses, representative of an artistic community who internalizes the paradigms and failures of late capitalism. OTRXS MUNDXS focuses on highlighting otherness: artist’s presentations constitute artistic microcosms which question the preconceived, hegemonic notions—or else, they solidify alternative visions—of what it means to make art in or from Mexico City.
OTRXS MUNDXS presents a majority of younger, or emerging artists—for some of whom this exhibition is their first major museum presentation—as it articulates the narratives in which they are invested with a selected group of more established artists who have been instrumental for defining the Mexican artistic landscape, both nationally and internationally.
Even though the exhibition is an exhaustive revision of the current artistic landscape, it is not intended to be an all-encompassing or universal exercise. In that sense, the exhibition has been constructed with an awareness of its own limitations and with the hope of posing one argument, amongst the many that can be made about art in the present.
The exhibition is, first and foremost, a platform for art and artists to trace conversations that have been at the forefront of global artistic discourse, presenting the important dialogue between local communities and Mexican artists with artists from Ecuador, República Dominicana, France, Brazil, Peru, and many cities of the United States. It also addresses the lack of institutional representation and attention to local communities, particularly for a younger generation of artists in the city. OTRXS MUNDXS consists of an unprecedented institutional response to the global pandemic; a gesture which, in the best of cases, anticipates a post-pandemic alterity, a world in which equality, social and interspecies justice and the well-being of the inhabitants of this complex city, is not posed as radical idea, but as an attainable reality.
Francis Alÿs, ASMA, Zazil Barba, Fernanda Barreto, Javier Barrios, Miguel Calderón, Pia Camil, Marcos Castro, Paloma Contreras Lomas, Chelsea Culprit, Pablo Dávila, ektor garcía, Mario García Torres y Sol Oosel, Yann Gerstberger, Julieta Gil, Daniel Godínez Nivón, Romeo Gómez López, Cristobal Gracia, Clotilde Jiménez, Madeline Jiménez, Ángela Leyva, Yeni Mao, Noe Martínez, Melanie McLain, Josué Mejía, Berenice Olmedo, Fernando Palma, Tania Pérez Córdova, Rita Ponce de León, Jerónimo Reyes-Retana, Armando Rosales, Marco Rountre, SANGREE, Barbara Sánchez Kane, Guillermo Santamarina, Ana Segovia, Tercerunquinto, Tezontle and Beatriz Zamora.
ABOUT MARCOS CASTRO
Marcos Castro’s practice is strongly marked by a style coming from the Mexican graphic and muralist tradition, which also highlights the influences of neo-expressionism and German expressionism, as well as a contemporary gothic or punk aesthetic.
Within his practice, the artist has developed a personal symbolic language articulated around several constants, such as an animalistic imaginary with hybrid beings, and above all a constant rereading of Mexican origin mythology. By deconstructing patriotic symbols or reinterpreting events all the way from pre-Hispanic history to the student movement of 1968, Marcos Castro conveys a personal vision of his contemporaneity, of its own historical and cultural moment, and at the same time incites the spectator to question the official historical and nationalist discourses.
Marcos’ work puts a spotlight on Mexico’s fragmented and incomplete identity, from which he picks up a multitude of symbolic elements and aesthetic codes and uses them to construct a new narrative; a kind of
personal mythology in which everyone, by sharing the same context, can recognize each other. The artists is positioned as a witness of his time and even as the bearer of a revolutionary torch, a torch belonging to a revolution of thought that forces us to question the established order and the most ingrained myths.
STATEMENT
The images I create come from my own experience and connection with nature. There is also an influence in my work from my cultural context, for instance, the importance of rituals. All of my work appears to be a story, permanently incomplete because there is no end or beginning. It is a story that takes place day by day, that is constantly evolving and continually created. In this way, each painting, drawing and sculpture appears as a fragment, an episode within the same world.
SOLO HOW until December 6
]]>SOLO SHOW until December 6
There is something inescapably strange about contemplating your own reflection. It necessitates the mental operation of flipping things from left to right and vice versa. This maneuver, which according to some psychoanalysts we learn to perform before the age of two, is a latent reminder that reality is woven by weak knots. Just pull a strand for the normal to reveal a hidden secret. What is taken for granted is only what would be unbearable to examine in detail: if suddenly the grimace in the mirror doesn’t match the voluntary gesture or the glass of water slips from the hand in the dark of the bureau, the cold sweat comes, an inescapable imminence.
In Andrea Villalón’s paintings we often witness these irreversible moments in which the alien awaits us at every turn of the corner: when the scissors are about to cut a lock of hair, in the frozen lightning glimpsed through a window, or in the free, albeit slow, fall of a glass of wine. In other scenes we see the putrefaction of fruits, the burning of a candle or the fragility of an egg shell as warnings that time passes; however, in the equanimous faces of the people represented, the mundanity of these events is encrypted. It seems that the serenity of their gaze is an accomplice of the subversion of what we consider normal. The apparent repetitions of our daily actions are manifested as unique events in this contrast of traditional scenes with sinister signs. The bathroom of a house conceals a personal universe inside the bathwater, the cats have an unrepeatable personality and under the bed lie a pair of familiar and watchful eyes.
Whoever contemplates these paintings must wonder about the moments when a stitch of whatever it is that lurks becomes visible. It may seem that threats are always other entities, or extraordinary events, but this is not the case. Nothing puzzles more than the sudden remoteness of the known. Like the feeling upon waking that something about us has changed during our sleep, which fades as the day progresses; or when viewing a painting for the first time, the overwhelming certainty of having had that same experience before, which someone else knew how to portray using a precise combination of colors.
By Nayeli García Sánchez
]]>“New __ on the Block Vol. 3”, group show by Christian Castañeda, Floria González, Mariana Paniagua y Sofía Ortiz until October 31.
“Trastienda” is a space within Machete where we promote art among new collectors. While providing a platform to emerging artists to initiate or strengthen its relationship with the Market.
With the health crisis that we are experiencing, we decided to close our physical space to prioritize the operation of the gallery and thus reach the long-awaited “other side of the coast” ... as safe and sound as possible.
New_ on the Block Vol.3 is our rst exhibition in this context.
For the rst time, an artist studio will host this exhibition and celebrates the emerging talent that is the spirit and the reason behind this much-loved project.
For this third edition, we chose four talented artists with whom we started to collaborate this year. In their works, the real interwoven with fantasy; being awake with being dreaming, the present with the absent. With very di erent pictorial approaches, they achieve scenes that put in tension “the visible” and the daily.
I feel that this exhibition accompanies the rare ed state of mind in which these pandemic months have submerged us and forged an enunciative space where we can include and rede ne our point of view. Reality as we knew it wants to be replaced binstitutionalized “new normal” that suggests, unwittingly and against of its objective, that the norm is something mobile.
We can take this as an open invitation to be us who build our “new norm” from our trenches. Perhaps from this milestone, we remember more often that there is a powerful and subtle fantasy in addition to reality.
Floria’s, Sofia’s, Mariana’s, Christian’s, yours, and mines too.
Domitila Bedel
Now open “New _ on the Block Vol. 2”, group show by Andrea Villalón, Maíra Senise, María Conejo, María Fragoso, Mariel Lebrija and Sofia Spinnato in Machete Galería, until September 19.
"Trastienda” is a space within Machete where we encourage new art collectors and spotlight emerging artists in order to begin or strengthen their relationship with the market. Their work is not only visible in the homonymous space that we have within the gallery, but also on our digital platforms and now in “New _ on the Block Vol. 2”, which inaugurates their presence in our exhibition program.
We chose for this exhibition six artists who directly or indirectly delve into the notion of the body in their paintings.
Contrary to the historical tendency in art, where until the mid-20th century the gaze upon the female subject / body was determined by the needs and desire of the patriarchal system, in this exhibition it is women who look at themselves and at each other.
Through these works we want to create a sum of vignettes that becomes a story larger than itself, where the body appears in multiple and different ways: the body as a character, as a self-portrait, as a landscape, as nostalgia, as a poem or as a monstrosity, but in all cases the body as a creative medium and as a generator of meaning.
]]>Statement
María is interested in showing the human body like a sign of resilience, a communicating gesture through her pictorial production.
There are two main reasons why her work revolves around the femenine body. The fist one is because of her existential crisis as a child trying to understand why something that seems so insignificant like our bodies is everything for us and also to understand and meditate about its vulnerability and the way her religious education stigmatized her body and sexuality.
The second reason is because of the way the history of art have told us how a woman is supposed to be represented, the way it has been consistently controlled by institutions that have established the limits of correct sexualities.
At the end, thanks to all this new changes in our society where the figure of feminicide and violence towards the bodies and the psyche of women has taken on an unprecedented public state, her work is to propose new ways of perceiving our bodies.
Wanna know more about María's work? check out her instagram: @maria_conejo
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