An arc is drawn between Peláez and Shinagawa of twenty years in which the same concern to investigate, experiment and practice painting that addresses the multiple qualities and possibilities of the material is observed, from the unusual combinations of oil on paper in Javier Peláez or concrete mixed with oil in Yoab Vera, to the reinvention of techniques and transformation of physical properties of the raw material, such as the updated version of the encaustic in Alfredo Gallegos Mena and the use of dense layers of acrylic paint on canvas that is later removed, folded and partially fragmented in Haruna Shinagawa. Or the confrontation of materials of natural origin (pigments, waxes, oils, paper and wood present in the work of Peláez and Gallegos Mena) against others of artificial production (acrylics, resins and concrete that stand out in the work of Shinagawa and Vera). In any case, in the four painters gathered in this program convened by Saenger and Eukaryote, a conscious way of construction prevails which approaches painting from its own physicality, situating itself in a liminal space beyond certain medium, theme or era. Consequently, its processes reside in the creation of hybrid works from materials that have been transmuted from their original condition and in which each intervened material is considered a source of information. The result is four practices that constantly surpass the conventional restrictions of painting and that, in response, involve in their work dynamics a wide variety of methods and resources that emphasize a unique formal, technical and conceptual inventiveness, expanding the possibilities of the current pictorial field by extracting the expressive potential of the material. At the same time, the peculiar painting of Alfredo Gallegos Mena, Haruna Shinagawa, Yoab Vera and Javier Peláez operate as tools to address the frictions of contemporary visual communication.
“It feels like I'm doing alchemy when I use metallic colors on the canvas”; This is how the artist Haruna Shinagawa describes her pictorial process as an alchemy. That is, an exploration of the transmutations of matter.
— Christian Barragán