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Magali Lara
Paul Cézanne believed that painting in gray made a painter: “On n’est pas un peintre, tant q’on n’a pas peint un gris.” This idea, postulated in the context of the 21st century—as suggested by philosopher Peter Sloterdijk—defines gray as the chromatic principle by which the complex keys to life and thought can be found. Cézanne’s lesson on this color that barely bears light, implies understanding the meanings commonly attributed to it: neutrality, indifference, mediocrity, apathy, lawless space, or action that comes from the shadows.
Artist Magali Lara (Mexico City, 1956) is not afraid of the use of gray within the realm of visual poetry. Lara has developed a direct yet sophisticated pictorial language, in which painting and drawing merge in a gestural space filled with objects, elements, feelings, emotions, moods, and flowers. A cult artist, Lara began her career by making feminist-leaning vignettes and narratives—not exempt from irony and humor— of animated objects. These works bore a clear relationship to comics and graphic novels. Over four decades, the artist has created a significant body of paintings through which stains and chromatic atmospheres aim to explore the political and poetic nature of the grisaille from a female perspective. Lara has also produced a collection of artist books, in which the relationship between image and word modulates powerful personal reflections on sexuality, desire, death, love, and motherhood, as well as the lightness and setbacks of existence.
Lara, who has dedicated many years to teaching art, has earned a solid reputation dating back to her participation, at the end of the seventies, in Março, a semiotically driven group. Since that time, Lara has been contributing to debates about language and sexual differences that led her to the adoption of experimental modalities and to create publications. In her own words: “We were looking for a way to work from another place, from a difference. Not only because of the experiences of the female body, a body sexualized in a particular way. We sought an experience: creating certain types of objects, of artistic experiences, related to a different way of understanding the body, a body constantly censored, violated, defined by authorities.”
Lara's work reveals the gray zones of intimacy and femininity in the everyday life, without disdaining the activist possibilities of post-painterly painting. Her rigorous practice, based in consistent studio work, has allowed her to undertake numerous collaborations with other artists, poets, writers, and musicians throughout her career, through which she has enhanced the possibilities of painting and drawing—not as binary entities but as parts of a whole.
This first solo exhibition at the Galería RGR highlights a set of works made over the years in oil, graphics, gouache, and textiles, as well as artist books. This sample includes a significant selection from the early series Miedo (Fear) and the installation piece Glaciares, in which Lara demonstrates that her great ability to paint in gray works hand in hand with the retinal, atmospheric, and metaphorical mutability of this color, which best enunciates the subjectivity of the present.
Gabriela Rangel
Magali Lara (Mexico City, México, 1956)
Magali Lara is considered a central figure of feminist postmodern art in Mexico. She has a degree in Visual Arts for Plastic Expression from the University of Guadalajara and a Master of Arts from the Universidad Autónoma del Estado de Morelos. With more than 40 years of artistic practice based on collaborations with poets and performers, Lara has developed a multidisciplinary practice that explores issues related to the unconscious, everyday life, emotions, the body, the feminine, and the “otherness”.
Influenced by women painters of the Mexican School such as Maria Izquierdo, Olga Costa, and Frida Kahlo, Lara takes up an interest in still life, objects, and dreamlike atmospheres. These elements are used to compose a unique symbolic language that she has brought to the fields of animation, drawing, writing, ceramics, the artist’s book, painting, and textiles. Mainly associated with Conceptual art, Magali Lara has been constantly working on a “poetics” that delves into the body, intimacy, desire, motherhood, childhood, sexuality, and everyday life; all this from a perspective of subjectivity. Starting from the ordinary and the visceral of the human body allows her to make a philosophical review of the human condition, something that the artist considers essential in the social function of art.
Since the nineties, she has worked at the Facultad de Artes de la Universidad Autónoma de Morelos. She is currently part of the academic body of the Master’s Degree in Art Production and participates as a jury in several biennials and artistic production, and as a study plan advisor in various arts education institutions. She is a member of the Sistema Nacional de Creadores FONCA, which she accessed for the seventh time in the 2020-2023 period. In 2019 she received the Medal of Merit in Arts from Mexico City’s Congress and in 2024 she was awarded the Medal of Fine Arts by the Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes y Literatura in Mexico.
She currently lives and works in Cuernavaca, Mexico.
Magali Lara
N° 1, Series: Miedo, 1988
Watercolor on paper
Unframed: 36 x 28 cm (14 1/4 x 11 in)
Framed: 44 x 36 cm (17 1/4 x 14 1/4 in)
Magali Lara
N° 2, Series: Miedo, 1988
Watercolor on paper
Unframed: 36 x 28 cm (14 1/4 x 11 in)
Framed: 44 x 36 cm (17 1/4 x 14 1/4 in)
Magali Lara
N° 3, Series: Miedo, 1988
Watercolor on paper
Unframed: 36 x 28 cm (14 1/4 x 11 in)
Framed: 44 x 36 cm (17 1/4 x 14 1/4 in)
Magali Lara
N° 4, Series: Miedo, 1988
Watercolor on paper
Unframed: 36 x 28 cm (14 1/4 x 11 in)
Framed: 44 x 36 cm (17 1/4 x 14 1/4 in)
Magali Lara
Y yo no te perdono II, Series: Objetos, 1981
Acrylic on canvas and cotton cord
45.9 x 59.3 cm
18 x 23 1/4 in
Magali Lara
No me asusta, Series: La infiel CAP II La que abandona su nombre, 1985
Graphite and pastel on cotton paper
Unframed: 70 x 50 cm (27 1/2 x 19 3/4 in)
Framed: 73 x 53.5 cm (28 3/4 x 21 in)
Magali Lara
Tenderse en la hierba, Serie: La infiel, CAP III El mito de la sirena, 1985
Graphite and pastel on cotton paper
Unframed: 56.5 x 76 cm (22 1/4 x 30 in)
Framed: 60 x 79.5 cm (23 1/2 x 31 1/4 in)
Magali Lara
Leo mi destino, Series: La infiel, CAP II La que abandona su nombre, 1985
Graphite and pastel on cotton paper
Unframed: 50 x 70 cm (19 3/4 x 27 1/2 in)
Framed: 53 x 73.5 cm (20 3/4 x 29 in)
Magali Lara
Es cierto que te vi, Series: La infiel CAP III El mito de la sirena, 1985
Graphite and pastel on cotton paper
Unframed: 76 x 56.5 cm (30 x 22 1/4 in)
Framed: 79.5 x 60 cm (31 1/4 x 23 1/2 in)
Magali Lara
No lo dije, 2008
Oil on canvas
145 x 175 cm
57 x 69 in
Magali Lara
Esos agudos ojos, 2024
Oil on linen
130.5 x 200.5 cm
51 1/2 x 79 in
Magali Lara
En silencio golpeado para cubrirme, 2024
Oil on linen
130.5 x 200.5 cm
51 1/2 x 79 in
Magali Lara
Los pliegues de la boca desnuda, 2024
Oil on linen
130.5 x 200.5 cm
51 1/2 x 79 in
Magali Lara
Los días previos (4), Series: Los ojos no, 2016
Oil on linen
180 x 120 cm
70 3/4 x 47 1/4 in
Magali Lara
Desde el oído interno (B), 2018
Oil on linen
120 x 80 cm
47 1/4 x 31 1/2 ins
Magali Lara
Untitled, Series: Coraza (A001), 2019
Graphite and gouache on paper
Unframed: 50 x 70.5 cm (19 3/4 x 27 3/4 in)
Framed: 53 x 73.5 cm (20 3/4 x 29 in)
Magali Lara
Untitled, Series: Coraza (A002), 2019
Graphite and gouache on paper
Unframed: 50 x 70.5 cm (19 3/4 x 27 3/4 in)
Framed: 53 x 73.5 cm (20 3/4 x 29 in)
Magali Lara
Untitled, Series: Coraza (A003), 2019
Graphite and gouache on paper
Unframed: 50 x 70.5 cm (19 3/4 x 27 3/4 in)
Framed: 53 x 73.5 cm (20 3/4 x 29 in)
Magali Lara
Lo típico del rencor, 2007
Lápiz y pastel al óleo sobre papel de algodón
Unframed: 76 x 112.4 cm (30 x 44 1/4 in)
Framed: 79 x 115 cm (31 x 45 1/4 in)
Magali Lara
En otro lugar, 2020
Graphite, pastel and paper cutting on paper
Unframed: 58.5 x 89 cm (23 x 35 in)
Framed: 62 x 92 cm (24 1/2 x 36 1/4 in)
Magali Lara
No hay mundo, 2020
Paper cutout, ink, pencil, on paper
Unframed: 58.5 x 89 cm (23 x 35 in)
Framed: 62 x 92 cm (24 1/2 x 36 1/4 in)
Magali Lara
Sin título 1, Series: Conductos, 2006
Gobelin
High-warp loom, 100% wool
102 x 98 cm
40 1/4 x 38 1/2 in
Magali Lara
El pasado, 2013
36 pages
Closed: 23.5 x 20.7 cm (9 1/4 x 8 1/4 in)
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Magali Lara
Intemperie, 2012 - 2013
Artist's book: Chinese ink and collage
36 pages
Closed: 23.5 x 20.6 cm (9 1/4 x 8 in)
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Magali Lara
Intuición, 2013
Artist's book: Digital plotter printing on cotton paper
20 x 11.8 cm
7 3/4 x 4 3/4 in
Magali Lara
Untitled, Series: Glaciares, 2007
Gouache on paper
Unframed: 15 x 21 cm (6 x 8 1/4 in)
Framed: 23 x 29 cm (9 x 11 1/2 in)
Magali Lara
Untitled, Series: Glaciares, 2007
Gouache on paper
Unframed: 13.2 x 26.3 cm (5 1/4 x 10 1/4 in)
Framed: 21 x 34 cm (8 1/4 x 13 1/2 in)
Magali Lara
Untitled, Series: Glaciares, 2007
Gouache on paper
Unframed: 18.5 x 27 cm (7 1/4 x 10 3/4 in)
Framed: 26.5 x 35 cm (10 1/2 x 13 3/4 in)
Magali Lara
Untitled, Series: Glaciares, 2007
Gouache on paper
Unframed: 18.5 x 27 cm (7 1/4 x 10 3/4 in)
Framed: 26.5 x 35 cm (10 1/2 x 13 3/4 in)
Magali Lara
Glaciares, 2008 - 2009
Digital animation
Video 00:08:13 min
16:9 (1280 x 720)
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