Jorge Galindo: Black Paintings

In Black Paintings, Jorge Galindo advances his exploration of gesture, scale, and abstraction through a body of eleven works that combine monumental ambition with material and conceptual nuance. The exhibition features five large-scale paintings, five smaller compositions, and a nearly eight-meter-long centerpiece, underscoring Galindo’s ability to balance the physical immediacy of painting with a profound sensitivity to its histories and possibilities. While the title emphasizes black as a defining element, these works are far from monochromatic. Instead, black operates as a grounding presence, framing and amplifying Galindo’s characteristic dynamic gestures and flashes of color. Flowers—a recurring motif in Galindo’s practice—emerge within these works, rendered through sweeping, gestural strokes that suggest organic forms in motion. His visceral marks push the still life tradition into abstraction, reimagining the delicate realism of a 17th-century Dutch flower painting through the lens of contemporary, gestural vitality. As Galindo himself notes, “We channeled the idea of Willem de Kooning, to whom the paint is enough… you need a paint bottle, a brush and faith.

Galindo’s approach to painting is deeply rooted in a dialogue between physicality and spontaneity. His sweeping brushstrokes and layered surfaces reveal a painter who views the act of making as an embodied, performative process. Yet within the apparent immediacy of his gestures lies a sophisticated understanding of composition and rhythm. The nearly eight-meter centerpiece exemplifies this balance, its expansive scale amplifying the dialogue between movement and stasis, control and chaos. This tension between figuration and abstraction has long been a hallmark of Galindo’s practice, stemming from his early experimentation with collage, photomontage, and the incorporation of found materials. While these elements are absent here, their legacy is felt in the painter’s sensitivity to layering and juxtaposition. The black grounds recall the tactility and depth of his earlier mixed-media works, while the gestural marks that punctuate them speak to his ability to synthesize disparate influences into a cohesive visual language.

The five smaller works included in the exhibition offer moments of intimacy, inviting close inspection of the artist’s technique. Here, the reduced scale magnifies the intricate relationships between color, texture, and gesture. These pieces provide a counterpoint to the larger compositions, demonstrating Galindo’s capacity to adapt his painterly vocabulary across varying formats without losing its intensity or resonance.