The artist Galo García recreates patterns in a sample

Ecuadornews:

The discontinuous lines of the molds used by the seamstresses form in the canvases the contours of the author himself, the architectural and tourist icons of the city of Guayaquil or the tools of the artist’s painting workshop.

But they are also a way of referring to the history of painting itself: in those forms are hidden pieces of Guernica, the famous Spanish painting by Pablo Picasso, or a set of legs and shoes from the Pata Pata imprint of the Ecuadorian maestro Enrique Tábara.

In ‘Déjà Vu’, the Guayaquil artist Galo García Carrión assumes and recreates the technique of sewing patterns – the models with which fashion designers and seamstresses create fashion pieces – to turn over their artistic concerns, which have to do with art itself and this time with topics such as fashion, tailoring, the city, comics, design or brands.

It consists of 15 paintings resulting from a four-year inquiry process, in a sample that officially opened last Thursday (May 24, 2018) in the Dpm gallery in Guayaquil, where it will remain open until mid-June. The idea of using the sewing patterns resulted from the remembrance that the artist had to revisit the workshop of his maternal grandmother, Rosa Merchán, and to have again in his hands the fashion patterns of Burda magazine that were accumulating in the sewing workshop that had been the site of their children’s games 50 years ago.

“I was impressed when I was a child, I saw my grandmother who spread the pattern on the table, she took from that pile of confused lines, without a visible shape for me, and she took out the molds for a dress or trousers,” says García. And it was based on that nostalgia of the “magic and incompressible” as a source of inspiration to develop his new works.

The drawing of lines, dots or double lines -or combined in acrylic and oil- mark white, yellow, blue, red, green and fuchsia backgrounds. In one of the paintings comic strip characters and iconic images of popular culture swirl – The Beatles walking in a zebra crossing or Marilyn Monroe holding their skirts in the air – along with silhouettes that correspond to Jesus or Buddha.

In another, the silhouettes of the characters of the mural by local artist Jorge Swett in the Social Security box in Guayaquil appear in three-tone lines on a black background, in the work that opens the exhibition. “As in the molds for sewing, in the imaginary and the artistic game that I propose the idea is that if someone took the prototypes and defragmented molds could assemble the puzzle with his own work from mine, or his own Guernica or a new Swett mural, “said García Carrión.

The lawyer began his artistic career late. In 2003, at the age of 43, he began studying visual arts at the Technological Institute of Arts of Ecuador (ITAE), where he studied until 2007. Up to now, he has four solo exhibitions. Saidel Brito, Cuban-Ecuadorian artist, his teacher at ITAE, wrote the curatorial text of the exhibition. (I)

Source: http://www.elcomercio.com/tendencias/aritsta-galogarcia-patrones-muestra-guayaquil.html