Patricia García, “Herencia Ancestral”

By Heather Chase

Mexican artist Patricia García, whose solo exhibition opens at HEALY contemporáneo on Saturday, June 10, from 3-5pm, has exhibited in galleries and museums throughout Mexico, Cuba, Italy, and the United States. García’s paintings and drawings arrest and attract the viewer with an emotional and beautiful surrealism that portrays the connections of ancient history to modernity and of internal to external. Like the best surrealists, García renders realistic objects of great human import—hands, hearts, faces, and flowers—and combines them in unusual and vivid ways. One of the most engaging and gorgeous works in the HEALY contemporáneo exhibit is «Heart of a Dog, Flowers for Me.”

From a distance the picture could be mistaken for a still life—a charcoal and carmine vase filled with the vibrant green foliage and buds of red Mexican lilies. Close up, the painting is not at all still but, rather, rippling with the movement of the past and present, the real and surreal. The vase is a Xolo dog whose open mouth holds the flowers while its body reveals a strong heart, arteries striving upwards, mirroring the leaves of the lilies. Xolos are one of the most ancient dogs in the world, indigenous to Mexico and considered by Pre-Columbians to be guardians of the night and the underworld. They protect humans against evil and guide mortals during hard times. García’s dog’s keen eye, cocked ear, and fierce heart proclaim the persistent influence of the past on the present, on the “Flowers for Me.”

The past is a recurring theme in García’s work. Even a seemingly whimsical photographic portrait of her balancing on her head in an upside-down bowler hat like that worn in Magritte’s “Son of Man» has a serious title, “Ash Remembers.” The artist’s insistence on the effects of many yesterdays—recent and distant—on today makes her images align with many contemporary concerns, from the appreciation of ancient cultures to climate change to violence, colonial and current. Still, her work is characterized by mystery and wonder, not horror. Repeated forms, which change and repeat—two sets of arms, multiple faces, the moon— infuse her compositions. 

García’s creations suggest ideas, and she, herself, ascribes many meanings to them, but she is not a conceptual artist whose offerings can be summarized in words. With great technical skill and complex compositions of shapes and objects, she makes works that a viewer wants to see over and over, might want to live with and contemplate at length. Her images recall a line of Gabriel García Marquez in “Love in the Time of Cholera” when a character is “overwhelmed by the belated suspicion that it is life, more than death, that has no limits.” Through intriguing surrealist juxtapositions, technical excellence, and resonant symbology, the works of Patricia García transcend limits and inspire both sensations and contemplation.
Patricia García’s work is in the permanent collections of the National Museum of Mexican Art, Chicago, Televisa, Universidad de Guadalajara, and many private collections internationally. This is her first exhibition in San Miguel de Allende.