SERGIO GARVAL

OBRA WORK

Sin Título
Óleo sobre Lino
Oil on Line
60 x 50 cms
2020

Sin Título
Óleo sobre Tela
Oil on Canvas
246 x 124 cms
2020

Siena
Óleo sobre Tela
Oil on Canvas
246 x 124 cms
2020

Construcción
Aguafuerte y Aguatinta
118 x 86 cms
2004


Extraviados
Aguafuerte y Aguatinta
86 x 118 cms
2004

El Hoyo
Aguafuerte y Aguatinta
86 x 118 cms
2004

Sin Título
Litografía y Acuarela
Litograph & Watercolor
90 x 70 cms
2020

Lilit
Litografía y Acuarela
Litograph & Watercolor
90 x 70 cms
2019

La Bestia
Óleo/MDF
Oil/MDF
24 x 124 cms
2020

ACERCA ABOUT SERGIO GARVAL

My encounter with his more than dramatic work made me deduce that the effectiveness of an art piece happens when it makes intellect and sensitivity collide. It is then when a knot begins to disentangle, something that otherwise would pass unnoticed among the vastness of images that overwhelm us every day. The aesthetic emotion that Sergio Garval’s work provokes in us is radical despite the harshness of the subjects he dares to depict. His are that kind of pieces that one cannot easily let go.

I’ve started to discover slowly that this artist born in Guadalajara , Jalisco in 1968 is interested in the behaviour of groups of the masses. I have also confirmed, after looking his paintings once and again, that there is a rather evident displacement from a common focus which is always centred in one person within a main scene ; he focuses in the collective reaction to what is happening to one individual. This is one of his most original and interesting proposals in comparison with his colleague’s work. Garval’s will to take us to raped public spaces is shocking, they are a series of environments where there isn’t a safe, healing private space. He has worked recently in Ants, a series of shocking scenes about certain collective behaviours that approach people to animals. Works like Just another day faces the fact that crimes happen daily in the world, depicting it through inks on the white canvas that make his drawing skills stand out. The bird’s eye view that he enjoys using so much highlights the idea of animal behaviour of groups of people by reducing and minimizing the human figure turning it to grotesque, to what is no related to politeness. I should also mention that his representation of people in trolleys also respond to a sociological analysis of individuals and not to the need of showing their personal, intimate tragedies.

Another subject of the several series that Garval proposes to the world is Flesh, a rather powerful and everlasting matter which is sometimes overlooked in Art history. Despite the fact that in recent times the morbidness of the body has been presented in galleries and museums through the work of artists such as Lucien Freud, Francis Bacon and Jenny Saville (very remarkable in this matter), Mexican artists have not showed a particular interest in the matter of flesh in the ennoble, not artistic aspect of it.

About six years ago, some exhibitions as illustrative as El cuerpo aludido (The quoted body) at Mexico’s MUNAL (National Museum of Art) arose the curiosity of some enthusiasts of the truth as supreme value, but any progress in the appreciation of the bulkiness or uninhibitions of the body has been slow. We can therefore say that incarnations fearlessly created and pasted by Garval have marked an important milestone in the history of Mexican contemporary art. It is a territory that very few deal with.

In his paintings, flat finishing and gradual corporal transitions make way to impulsive, kind of expressionist brushstrokes. Garval breaks the notion of good taste (noble gestures, continued fluency of movements and harmonic relations among strain and flexibility of anatomy). He is interested in unmasking and weighing up moral values referred to his own doctrine not as imitator of reality but as a translator of it. His is a more intellectual than mechanic activity, thus he destroys, fragments and torments. He cries out crisis.

We’re living in a Manichean world, in a reductionist culture where simple languages, easy works, trouble-free classifications are looked after. That’s what some galleries and museums privilege to fulfil the market. Contrary to that, Garval’s work gives us back full humanity since it refuses to participate in the limitations of the media-managed image; meanwhile, he solves the matter in an outstanding way at the same time that he pleases us with his keen artistry of both the graphic space and the human figure. By daring to enter into the dark side, the shade that Jung talked about, he touches a sore spot in contemporary culture with a very refreshing proposal.

By Maria Helena Noval

Exposiciones Selectas

Selected Exhibitions

2006 “First Spring Collective, 2006”. Naxica Gallery, Mexico City, D.F.
2006 “Maco” Mexico Contemporary Art Fair, Quetzali Gallery, Mexico City, D.F.
2006 “Tribute to Don Quixote de La Mancha”. May Cultural Festival, Ex-Convent of Carmen, Guadalajara, Jalisco. México.
2006 “Fifteenth Anniversary”. Irma Valerio Gallery, Zacatecas, Zacatecas. México.
2006 “Prints”. Factor Gallery, Guadalajara, Jalisco.
2006 “Juárez. Liberty and Image”. National Palace, Mexico City, D.F.
2006 “Art Miami” Art Fair. Turner Carroll Gallery, Miami, Florida. USA.
2006 “Art Basel” Art Fair. Miami, Florida. USA.
2007 “University of Guadalajara Art Collection”. Cabanas Cultural Institute, Guadalajara, Jalisco. México.
2007 “Arte Americas 2007” Art Fair, Virginia Miller Gallery, Miami, Florida.
2007 “Maco” Mexico Contemporary Art Fair, Quetzali Gallery, Mexico City, D.F.
2007 “Art Collection”. Federal Secretary of Finance Museum, Mexico City, D.F.
2007 “Latin American Art – Myth and Reality”. Nassau County Museum of Art, Roslyn Harbor, New York.
2008 “Visions: 20th Century Latin American Art”. Boca Raton Museum of Art, Boca Raton, Florida.
2008 “Artists to Watch: Mexico” – Turner Carroll Gallery, Santa Fe, New Mexico.
2008 “Collective” – Terreno Baldio Gallery, Mexico City, D.F.
2008 “Homage to José Clemente Orozco”. Cabañas Cultural Institute, Guadalajara, Jalisco.
2008 “Art Basel” Art Fair. Terreno Baldio Gallery, Miami, Florida.
2009 “Latin American Jewels”. Virginia Miller Gallery, Coral Gables, Florida.
2009 “Creation in Movement. Fonca 1989-2009”. Vasconcelos Library, Mexico City, D.F.
2010 Maco Art Fair. Terreno Baldio Gallery, Mexico City, D.F.

2004 “Latin Visions. A Collector’s Insight” – Nassau County Art Museum, Roslyn Harbor, Long Island, New York.
2004 XII Rufino Tamayo Biennial. Oaxaca Contemporary Art Museum, Oaxaca, Oaxaca. México.
2004 International Small Engraving Salon Carbunari 2004. Florean Museum, Baia Mare, Romania.
2004 Second National Biennial of Visual Arts Yucatan 2004. Quintana Roo, Yucatán. México.
2005 “Seven Artists”. Valentin Gomez Farias Gallery, University of Guadalajara, Guadalajara, Jalisco. México.
2005 “Creation in Movement. Young Artists 2003-4”, Galeria Central, National Arts Center, Mexico City, D.F.
2005 XII Rufino Tamayo Biennial. Sinaloa Art Museum, Culiacan, Sinaloa.
2005 Annual Gay-Lesbian Salon. University of Chopo Museum, Mexico City, D.F.
2005 XII Rufino Tamayo Biennial. Querétaro Art Museum, Querétaro, Querétaro. México.
2005 XII Rufino Tamayo Biennial. Instituto Potosino de Bellas Artes, San Luis Potosí, SLP. México.
2005 XII Rufino Tamayo Biennial. Metropolitan Cultural Space, Tamaulipas, México.