NYAB Event - German Venegas "Dando Tumbos"

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At Galeria Ramis Barquet (Chelsea)
Media: Painting, Sculpture

German Venegas was born in La Magdalena Tlatlauquitepec in Puebla in 1959. Having studied at La Esmeralda in Mexico City from 1977 to 1982, he had his first solo show in the early 1980s and subsequently became associated with the irreverent Neo-Mexicanist movement, whose work appropriated motifs from Mexican popular and ancient culture to underscore personal narratives. Part painter, sculptor, draftsman and engraver, it is as a woodcarver that his work truly excelled. By the late 1980s he began incorporating the shallow-cut wooden figures into his paintings that he would soon develop into the true bas-reliefs for which he went on to achieve critical acclaim.
Characterized by its ad-hoc fusion of varying traditions and mythologies, his work from this period succeeds in simultaneously venerating and undermining his chosen iconography, whether drawn from the remote past or lowest ebb of contemporary culture. Deities and icons of Eastern and Western origin share the spotlight with hideous vomiting drunkards as Venegas oscillates between worlds seamlessly. He creates seemingly primitive altarpieces that deify the ordinary using deftly handled rough-hewn wood and clumps of hair, and co-opts tradition to create neo-expressionist reliefs that are at once captivating and horrifying.

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