La Galería Rebelde is pleased to present the exhibition “Templum” by the Guatemalan artist Mónica Serra (Guatemala, 1966). For the first time since her last exhibition in 2011, the artist exhibits paintings with a new color palette and more action and movement in her technique.

Serra began working in the late 1980s after completing her studies in 1988 at The Syracuse University in New York,. Upon returning to Guatemala, her work took a complete turn in 2002, when she accidentally discovered a painting technique that would define her style to this day. The “Templum” paintings pursue that same technique, but expand it into a new, more dynamic and dramatic territory.

The paintings are made with multiple layers of acrylic paint of different colors which the artist impregnates with clean water through strong gestures in different directions. This allows the water drops to acquire color and leave their trail visible on the painting. This action is reminiscent of the “action painting” of the American movements of the 20th century. But unlike the “action painters” who impregnated the canvas with new layers by throwing paint from brushes or wooden rulers onto the canvas, for Serra the gesture is much more poetic and does not consist of adding new layers of paint, but in erasing the existing ones with the passage of water through the color. The technique then consists of a game between “doing” and “undoing” between “painting” and “unpainting” and that is her pictorial innovation.

This new series of works, produced in 2024 specifically for this exhibition, is much more gestural than her previous output. The violent gesture of the “splash” of water is more visible and encompasses the entirety of the paintings. The directions of the dripping also reveal that the artist rotates the canvases to direct the water in all directions, turning the process into a performative gesture. Furthermore, the outline of the body is visible in strong lines that delimit the reach of her body in the canvas, making each painting a print not only of the movement of the water, but also of the movement of her own body.

Time is also a factor to consider in her works, not only because they refer to the classic academy of art, but because each layer of paint has a limited time to be worked on and erased with water. Each painting is then also a process impacted by time and the conditions of each material, forming a conversation between colors and material relationships.

On the images, the somber and elegant abstractions take us to landscapes of romanticism or classicism in terms of their color palette and their games between light and shadow, making us think of the illusion of a fictitious infinite closeup to a fragment of The Walker on the Sea of Clouds (1818) by Caspar David Friedrich or The Destruction of Sodom (1805) by J. M W. Turner, references from the Romantic period that is also a great inspiration for the artist.

Her classical references have led historians to consider Serra's work within the timeline of modern Guatemalan art. However, her temporality, and above all, the innovation of her technique are undoubtedly contemporary due to her experimentation with the body, gestures, the conceptual and even the performative.

This series is a continuation of the legacy of Serra who had a long pause to rest from her own work. However she returns with impressive strength to invite us to a templum of contemplation of dramatic and almost religious landscapes that invite us to the ritual of seeing ourselves reflected in these colored mirrors.

-Josseline Pinto, Curator

Photography: José Oquendo