Julio García Aguilar at Parallel Oaxaca

Artist: Julio García Aguilar

Exhibition title: The possibilities of evil

Venue: Parallel Oaxaca, Mexico City

Date: October 11 – December 5, 2020

Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Parallel Oaxaca

Parallel /// Oaxaca is pleased to present The possibilities of evil an exhibition of new work by painter Julio García Aguilar. The exhibition questions the dynamics of power we encounter in our quotidian present and how individuals shape their experiences and imagination as emotional states, re-appropriating mundane images, allegories and clichés to re-use them as symbolic representational elements.

Julio García Aguilar creates images reflecting on autobiographical situations and the material impact of his personal experiences of immigration, combining an on-going exploration on the forces of creation from the realities of contemporary life. His works embed vibrant color fields with a gestural style where subjects drawn from his immediate surroundings mix with Cartoon motifs, digital found imagery and complex political issues that evoke the local context through a critical examination.

First sketched on the canvas as loose narratives with an ambiguous relationship to power, the paintings of Julio García Aguilar distrust the stereotypes that simplify the representation of difference and perpetuate visions of colonialism, color and class divide and the institutionalized structures of inequity applied to territories.

Combining the ambivalent backdrops and the exotism that the westernized measuring of cartoon-inspired narratives create, along with modes of seeing inheritated from art historical lineages, the figures in Julio García Aguilar´s paintings challenge the logics of space and expand within restrained universes as live vegetation fluctuating within regenerative landscapes, which are not often represented in popular visual culture.

The possibilities of evil seek to translate Julio García Aguilar´s personal and communal experience of how rigid structures and architectural artifacts of estrangement and extraction shape the vibrancy and perception of current social realities, suggesting paths through the debris by an emotional desire leading for a new direction and movement within a shifting world.

Julio García Aguilar was born in Ejutla, Oaxaca in 1993, he lived his childhood and adolescence in Atlanta. His training in art is self-taught. He is founding member of YOPE ps, a project focused on the promotion local and foreign artists, dedicated to the exhibition and reflection of contemporary culture. His works have been shown at the Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil (Mexico City), Le Dernier Cri (FR), bbq LA (USA) and LADRÓN Galería (Mexico City).