Mexico City-based artist reveals the details behind the inspiration of his artistic practice.

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.

 

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Gonzalo García, Estudio para un Incendio III, 2022, Oil on wood, 18h x 13w cm. Available: $200 USD