Painting
The foundation of this exploration is a conversation between material practices. In these works, woodcut proofs from my printmaking practice are stretched over wooden panels to respond to a substrate latent with information. Painting then becomes an act of geological layering: pigment builds up, obscures, and at times breaks open to reveal the woodcut beneath. This interaction mirrors cosmology itself: just as dark matter reveals its presence through gravitational effects on visible bodies, the woodcut beneath asserts itself through the painted surface - a hidden structure shaping the visible whole.
Within this constructed space, forms behave as portals or spectral bodies. They overlap and collapse in space, charged with an energy both graphic and painterly. These elements, caught in a state of becoming, are not depictions of the cosmos but rather operations that mimic its behavior: the slow accretion of matter, the veiling of forms, and the sudden clarity of revelation. Together, the layered processes of woodcarving and painting form a surface that speaks not of a single image, but of a continuous, deeply material record.
Within this constructed space, forms behave as portals or spectral bodies. They overlap and collapse in space, charged with an energy both graphic and painterly. These elements, caught in a state of becoming, are not depictions of the cosmos but rather operations that mimic its behavior: the slow accretion of matter, the veiling of forms, and the sudden clarity of revelation. Together, the layered processes of woodcarving and painting form a surface that speaks not of a single image, but of a continuous, deeply material record.
-Sergio Suárez
2025
2024
