Daniel Lezama

Hilario Galguera Gallery presents the exhibition Velo y Alquimia: Early Works by Daniel Lezama, which shows early works from the first and second series produced by the artist between 1995 and 1997 together with a paradigmatic large-format piece painted in the year 2016.

Since the beginning of his career as a painter, in the mid-nineties, Lezama developed his work through series or sets of images organized under a guiding concept.

The sense of curating Velo y Alquimia: Early Works by Daniel Lezama is the enigmatic sense that results from the convergence of the contents of the early works—almost all of them from the series El Velo de Maya (1996-1997), with the exception of Adam and Eve (1995), a piece from the first series painted by the artist: Nudes on decorative backgrounds (1995-1996), and another that corresponds to a transitional micro-series towards The Veil of Maya, titled El Desplazamiento (1996). )—with the imagery of the triptych Conductors (2016), from the Devices series (2012-2016).

Lezama's entire pictorial corpus can be characterized as a chain of series that make up something like a great allegorical visual novel, a narrative sequence in which the artist has proposed — from the beginning — a combination of his personal world with a particular deconstruction of multiple imaginaries and references taken from literature, philosophy, painting, religion, pop music and history.

In the exhibition you can see the artist's personal appropriation of two specific references during two different periods: the Vedic/Buddhist doctrine of the veil of maya and the iconography of the science-art of alchemy.

Regarding the meaning of the images gathered and confronted in the exhibition, it is relevant to highlight a question that has always been in the aesthetic mentality of Daniel Lezama: the earthly experience and the adventure of the human person can be realized as if they were a work of art. .

Extract from the curatorial text written by Erick Castillo

Daniel Lezama chooses to paint in traditional medium and style. His painting and aesthetic vision focus on extraordinarily painted narratives, referenced from the Mexican vernacular context, on unofficial stories of memories, dreams and desires, as well as a new romanticism that sees art from an existential perspective. Usually making large or medium format paintings and sometimes drawing, monotype and engraving, Lezama expresses his profound and unprecedented vision of “what is Mexican” in an era marked by post-conceptual practices.

Daniel Lezama has participated in individual exhibitions in places such as the City Museum, Mexico City, Mexico (2008); Roebling Hall Gallery, New York, USA (2002); Hof & Huyser Galerie, Amsterdam, Netherlands (1998), among others. He has also participated in group exhibitions in places such as Angerlehner Museum, Austria (2014); University Museum of Contemporary Art, Mexico City, Mexico (2013); National Museum of Art, Mexico City, Mexico (2010). In 2022, his work was recognized with a retrospective exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in Mexico City and in 2005 he participated in the II Beijing Biennial, China. His work belongs to prestigious collections around the world including those of the University Museum of Contemporary Art (MUAC), Mexico City, Mexico; Murderme Collection, London, UK; Museum of Modern Art, Mexico City, Mexico; Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst, Ghent, Belgium; Hermes Trust Collection, London, UK; Institut Valenciá D’Art Modern, Spain; Museo del Barrio, New York, USA; and Essl Sammlung, Vienna, Austria, among others.

— Hilario Galguera Gallery