Gonzalo García

Statement

My artistic work as a painter is intimately related to my experience as a homosexual man and how my immediate context as a Mexican influences this experience. That is why for more than a half decade, I have been studying and reviewing Mexican films and novels from past decades, to thread them (within my work) with my current concerns.

My early paintings and drawings are more explicitly erotic because they focus exclusively on human flesh and depict the vulnerability of self-portraiture through the lens of intimacy and sex. Over time, I began to paint my friends in similar states, harnessing mystical and seductive realism in the works to evoke the physicality of each subject and the overall sense of desire. While these self-portraits allowed me to explore, and ultimately discover, who I was as a gay male artist, lately I have become more interested in working more metaphorically and bringing to life more subdued sexual motifs such as flowers with varied textures and colors, echoing the human body, and allowing the viewer to draw their conclusions.

Resume

Puebla, Mexico, 1985.

He studied Visual Arts at the Universidad del Instituto Allende in San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato. His practice addresses social and historical issues in Mexico, drawing as a point of departure on mid-twentieth-century literature as well as cinema from the 1970s and 1980s. Over more than a decade, he has developed a solid career with both solo and group exhibitions in Mexico and abroad.

His solo exhibitions include Refugios suaves (Galería LOOT, Mexico City, 2022), La musa enferma (Arte Actual, Monterrey, 2023), Flesh (CAM Galería, Mexico City, 2023), Interlace (Kates-Ferri Projects, New York, curated by Charles Moore, 2025), and La pintura también es un canto (CAM Galería, Mexico City, 2025). His work has also been presented in various international venues in Sweden, Spain, the United States, and Germany, including the group exhibition Trust Issues (Kornfeld Galerie, Berlin, 2025).

In 2025, he participated in the 20th Rufino Tamayo Biennial in Oaxaca, as well as in an exhibition at the Rufino Tamayo Museum in Mexico City, consolidating his presence within key institutions of the national museum circuit.

Throughout his career, he has received recognition in numerous national biennials. In 2025, he was awarded the 20th Rufino Tamayo Biennial Prize, one of the most significant distinctions in painting in Mexico. Previously, he received second prize at the 6th J. A. Monroy Painting Biennial (2022), as well as honorable mentions at the José and Tomás Chávez Morado Biennial (2018) and the 4th Lumen Biennial (2021). He has been a three-time recipient of the Jóvenes Creadores grant from FONCA (2013, 2018, and 2021) and, since 2022, has been a beneficiary of the Sistema Nacional de Creadores de Arte (SNCA) in the field of painting.