Santiago Garcia

"Zebra #533" oil painting of a black and white zebra looking back, side view

2021

The work of Santiago Garcia explores the wondrous, colorful and always intriguing world between figuration and abstraction. Through contextualization of reality, the Uruguayan artist’s work raises absurd situations within a framework of the everyday world and leaves the content on its own to the free interpretation of the observer. The artist was born in Montevideo, Uruguay in 1974. As self-taught painter, Garcia produced an immense body of work in his early years. During the mid-1990s, under an art scholarship with the University of Uruguay, he studied under master engraver Eduardo Fornasari, master painter Clever Lara and acclaimed ceramicist Susana Pizzurno. In 1998, Garcia obtained a grant from the Museum of American art of Maldonado for drawing and painting studies with the master painter Miguel Angel Battegazzore. He worked as an assistant to the Argentinean painter Rogelio Polesello for exhibition at the Museum of American art of Maldonado, Uruguay. For the exhibition, he produced murals for Juvenalia 98 and the subsequent exhibition at La Rural del Prado in Montevideo, Uruguay. The numbers and sometimes words you see in Santiago Garcia’s paintings are based on Divine Proportion, which is a mathematical ratio that ultimately determines the patterns and proportions of the painting. Also, numerology, each number has significance and meaning. Sometimes that meaning is subjective and not explainable. The words seen on the canvas are meant to have a subliminal effect that is up to the viewer to interpret. What’s important to note about the work is that they are “new figuration”, or “magic realism”. “New figuration” refers to the revival of figurative art in Europe and America in the 60’s following a period dominated by abstraction. The work shows a passion for the human (or animal or shoe) form. Garcia’s paintings often incorporate seemingly contradictory elements that he brings into harmony. Some of his paintings show animals in absurd situations where the modern world clashes with the wild in a context that allows the viewer to finish the work according to their own vision. He feels that the paintings should not be explained, but left to the viewer. Other paintings depict converse shoes that serve as metaphors for family, relationships, and reminders of where they’ve been and where they’re going.