Situar la orilla de cosmos
Sergio Suárez
February 3, 2025 – April 13, 2025
Sergio Suárez (born Mexico, 1995) describes the contents of his monumental woodcuts as constituting “an imaginary cosmology.” Cosmology is the branch of astronomy that deals with the origins and structure of the universe. It is essentially the practice of looking into the sky while wondering who we are, how we came to be, and where we fit into the larger scheme of things. What Suárez means by ”imaginary” is that the practice of investigation implied in these prints is allegorical, nonspecific, poetic, and personal, as opposed to technical or systematic. There is a reason some physicists compare quantum mechanics to mysticism: its core subject is exploring the invisible unknown by indirect means.
Though characterized by quite a lot of environmental and figurative turmoil (exploding volcanoes, fragmentary bodies), the subject of Suárez’s prints is not apocalypse but sublimity (awesomeness) in the Romantic sense. They are also a form of history painting, but independent of narrative. Suárez describes their densely populated suggestiveness as an empty vessel that can be filled by anyone and then poured into other understandings. Which makes his cosmology a working allegory for the many human traditions, both scientific and pseudoscientific, of seeking to push our consciousness beyond ourselves. This yearning for cosmic epiphany appears in many of his prints in the timeless visual metaphor of sparks from an earthly fire spiraling up to join the stars in the night sky.
Suárez’s visual investigations draw on visual ideas from sources as diverse as the heady early days of twentieth century science fiction illustration, cosmically-minded Romantics such as John Martin and William Blake, and Renaissance and Baroque printmakers like Albrecht Durer and Hendrik Goltzius. For Suárez one of the principal attractions of printmaking is its history as an investigative practice and a form of scholarship. From the Renaissance through the Enlightenment and right up to the advent of photography, art and science were intertwined in printmaking in the advancement of what was known as natural philosophy. Suárez has revived philosophical printmaking on a grand scale in order to explore what he calls “the porous membrane that exists between the material and the symbolic,” as well as how technique can blossom into meaning.
Shown here in the city of Suárez’s birth, these elaborately allusive allegories will also inevitably recall the works of the Mexican muralists: particularly their obsession with the unknowability and intractability of the larger social contract—for which the vastness of the heavens remains such a powerful metaphor. This impression of kinship is further strengthened by complementary architectonic arrangements of suggestively symbolic objects that openly refer to many of the same Indigenous American points of reference that inspired artists such as Diego Rivera (1886-1957). Rivera described Creation, his seminal mural (1922) for El Colegio de San Ildefonso—with its enigmatic rainbow-encircled, starry sphere radiating god hands—as allegorizing “the relationship between Mankind and the Elements, that is to say, the origin of the Sciences and the Arts…a kind of essential abbreviation of man.” Full of contingent bodies phase-shifting between heaven and earth, Suarez’s prints might easily be mistaken for studies or cartoons for new murals along similar lines. Star maps in pursuit of that most characteristic desire of our sky-viewing species: the need to follow our uncertainties into the cosmos.
Dakin Hart
Curator
Lista de objectos / Object List
Muro D a I / Wall R to L;
La maleza
2025
Woodcut on muslin over panel
72 x 48 in. (183 x 122 cm)
La incesante fragmentación del ser
2023
Woodcut on muslin over panel
96 x 144 in. (244 x 366 cm)
To shelter What Is Precious, to Yield What Is Valuable, and to Dispose of What is Harmful
2024
Woodcut on muslin over panel
72 x 96 in. (183 x 224 cm)
Suelo D a I / Floor R to L:
Quinto sol
2025
16 x 9 x 20 in. (40 x 22 x 50 cm)
Granite on resin, ceramic and clay brick
Círculo fragmentado
2025
Ceramic
7 x 6 x 10in (18 x 15 x 25 cm)
Acurrucarse en la materia
Latex, ceramic, ink on carved hydrocal and clay brick
15x10x10 in. (38x25x25 cm.)
2025
Cuenca
2025
Glazed ceramics
12 x 10 x 15 in. (30 x 25 x 38 cm)
Chispa, laguna, vacío y centro
2025
Glazed ceramic, cast bronze and clay brick.
12 x 29 x 10 in. (30 x 74 x 25 cm)
Unraveled Body
Granite on resin, bronze glazed ceramics, ink on hydrocal and clay brick
9 x 70 x 15 in. (22 x 177 x 38 cm)
2025
Pale Fire
2024
Cast aluminum
33 x 6 x 10 in. (83 x 15 x 25 cm)
Centro/Center:
El corazon de la eternidad
2024
Cast bronze
17 x 10 x 10 in. (43 x 25 x 25 cm)
Though characterized by quite a lot of environmental and figurative turmoil (exploding volcanoes, fragmentary bodies), the subject of Suárez’s prints is not apocalypse but sublimity (awesomeness) in the Romantic sense. They are also a form of history painting, but independent of narrative. Suárez describes their densely populated suggestiveness as an empty vessel that can be filled by anyone and then poured into other understandings. Which makes his cosmology a working allegory for the many human traditions, both scientific and pseudoscientific, of seeking to push our consciousness beyond ourselves. This yearning for cosmic epiphany appears in many of his prints in the timeless visual metaphor of sparks from an earthly fire spiraling up to join the stars in the night sky.
Suárez’s visual investigations draw on visual ideas from sources as diverse as the heady early days of twentieth century science fiction illustration, cosmically-minded Romantics such as John Martin and William Blake, and Renaissance and Baroque printmakers like Albrecht Durer and Hendrik Goltzius. For Suárez one of the principal attractions of printmaking is its history as an investigative practice and a form of scholarship. From the Renaissance through the Enlightenment and right up to the advent of photography, art and science were intertwined in printmaking in the advancement of what was known as natural philosophy. Suárez has revived philosophical printmaking on a grand scale in order to explore what he calls “the porous membrane that exists between the material and the symbolic,” as well as how technique can blossom into meaning.
Shown here in the city of Suárez’s birth, these elaborately allusive allegories will also inevitably recall the works of the Mexican muralists: particularly their obsession with the unknowability and intractability of the larger social contract—for which the vastness of the heavens remains such a powerful metaphor. This impression of kinship is further strengthened by complementary architectonic arrangements of suggestively symbolic objects that openly refer to many of the same Indigenous American points of reference that inspired artists such as Diego Rivera (1886-1957). Rivera described Creation, his seminal mural (1922) for El Colegio de San Ildefonso—with its enigmatic rainbow-encircled, starry sphere radiating god hands—as allegorizing “the relationship between Mankind and the Elements, that is to say, the origin of the Sciences and the Arts…a kind of essential abbreviation of man.” Full of contingent bodies phase-shifting between heaven and earth, Suarez’s prints might easily be mistaken for studies or cartoons for new murals along similar lines. Star maps in pursuit of that most characteristic desire of our sky-viewing species: the need to follow our uncertainties into the cosmos.
Dakin Hart
Curator
Lista de objectos / Object List
Muro D a I / Wall R to L;
La maleza
2025
Woodcut on muslin over panel
72 x 48 in. (183 x 122 cm)
La incesante fragmentación del ser
2023
Woodcut on muslin over panel
96 x 144 in. (244 x 366 cm)
To shelter What Is Precious, to Yield What Is Valuable, and to Dispose of What is Harmful
2024
Woodcut on muslin over panel
72 x 96 in. (183 x 224 cm)
Suelo D a I / Floor R to L:
Quinto sol
2025
16 x 9 x 20 in. (40 x 22 x 50 cm)
Granite on resin, ceramic and clay brick
Círculo fragmentado
2025
Ceramic
7 x 6 x 10in (18 x 15 x 25 cm)
Acurrucarse en la materia
Latex, ceramic, ink on carved hydrocal and clay brick
15x10x10 in. (38x25x25 cm.)
2025
Cuenca
2025
Glazed ceramics
12 x 10 x 15 in. (30 x 25 x 38 cm)
Chispa, laguna, vacío y centro
2025
Glazed ceramic, cast bronze and clay brick.
12 x 29 x 10 in. (30 x 74 x 25 cm)
Unraveled Body
Granite on resin, bronze glazed ceramics, ink on hydrocal and clay brick
9 x 70 x 15 in. (22 x 177 x 38 cm)
2025
Pale Fire
2024
Cast aluminum
33 x 6 x 10 in. (83 x 15 x 25 cm)
Centro/Center:
El corazon de la eternidad
2024
Cast bronze
17 x 10 x 10 in. (43 x 25 x 25 cm)