Sergio Suarez

On December 14, 2024, Seek ATL visited the studio of artist Sergio Suarez in collaboration with The Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia, and in honor of his recently being awarded a Working Artist Project grant and exhibition. You can listen to and/or read a curated selection of the transcript of our visit below.

SeekATL members in Sergio Suarez’s studio

Audio recording picks up mid-conversation during the visit….

Sergio Suarez (SS): (When i was a kid) I wanted to be a pilot, that was my dream. And I started the track to do that (which) was through a school that was close by to my house, and it was aeronautics, you know, kind of like a vocational school. I was interested in physics, had an interest in how things behave, and our perception of the world that it's not necessarily visible.

Growing up in Mexico, I grew up with my grandma, and she was super Catholic, so I grew up also surrounded by a lot of religious iconography, and you know, now that I look at the work that I do, I feel like it definitely has influenced my work. I'm using that syntax to be able to now articulate other ideas that, were interesting to me about, physics and particles and stuff. The phenomena of black holes, our perception of cosmology, and how they can form through perception.

SeekATL Member (SK): Sergio, last time we were here, I had this really delayed reaction where we were looking at your work for a long time and then I didn't realize that something we were looking at was the print from one of the wood carvings and I wanted to see if you would just point out anything that is a print of the original. How do you think of them in your mind? What do you call the wood carving?

SS: I feel like they're matrices. I feel like there's that aspect where they can generate work. I like them because they're an object that contains time, especially with mark-making. But it's a way to solidify, condense a lot of time in a space. I feel like that experience is really important when people see the work. Usually in printmaking, you don't show your plate, which is also what they're called. But I really enjoy that. I really like for people to be aware that this is a condensation, right?

And right now, these two right here are in progress. So you can see some of the areas where I'm carving, I still have some work to do, in some of the drawing areas, like the first moments. And then, down right there is actually the opposite side of a print that was too dark. So then I'm also kind of playing with image making and just this idea of every printing is a painterly moment, like an instant or something like that, because it's almost like a material exposure, right? There's pressure, there's information, there's a lot of things that happen. It's not like an actual textual translation. I feel like I tend to relate them to translations, right? Like the prints are an immediate translation of this, and then since I'm learning how to print them and what is an organic material, so sometimes it has voids, or also because this is like an industrial (material), the type of wood has voids, it's not perfect, I need to learn how to print it. So sometimes with the proofs, I'm able to then later on break them down, focusing on a particular area or two. Right around the corner those are more like the finished pieces, once they're already inked and sprayed, it's also sealed, so the wood doesn't just keep soaking the ink, and then that kind of gives it a white quality on the carving, because then they become yellow and there's a little golden. It's also really cool, because when you carve, you also reveal different layers of the wood, and those also kind of have different colors and change over time differently.

SK: I'm curious to hear more about the role of fire in the work, and we've talked about this a good amount, but the fire that cleanses, the fire that destroys in time, like in some ways I see fire almost as more of a character sometimes than the figures, right? And I'm particularly intrigued by how much it doesn't look like fire sometimes, and what's behind your decisions to stylize it so far into forms like we see here, or in the wood carving there, it's recognizable and yet it's become something else, what is that thing?

SS: For a while, when I was in undergrad, I was really into the work of Gaston Bachelard, who's a philosopher of the sciences. And he talked a lot about, also in literature, how we moralize phenomena, that’s just these physical phenomena. And later on, we give it either a good or a bad, or start, I guess, projecting directions or polarities into things. And he had a book called The Psychoanalysis of Fire, where he goes and looks at different ways that we talk about fire. And it's this shapeless thing, right? But in a lot of ways, it's just transformation. And it's a chemical process that uses complexity and completely takes matter into its simplest form, which is carbon. So I think for me definitely fire is everywhere. Right now, there's fires burning. We just don't know. Where our proximity to those (fires), is contingent on how much that is an issue it is to us. So I like the idea, also referencing that book, and again, thinking about how it's a symbol for the role of transformation, or even the role of matter changing into other more simpler states. Religious iconography is a really big one, too. The fire of hell, which I grew up fearing or whatever. And then the cleansing fire, or the Wheel of the Samsara, which in the border has the fire thing, at least in that cosmology.

SK: Speaking of space, I saw your show at Johnson Lowe, something that I was really enamored with was how you used red clay and all the sculptures lining the room, so it was like you were literally stepping into the work. So I was just wondering if you could talk a little bit more about how you see space in terms of gallery settings.

SS: Yeah, I really like to have conversations with the architectural spaces. I think that's really important. I feel like maybe it comes from growing up in these charged spaces that are just so designed to evoke a particular feeling. I mean, on that particular show, I used tezontle, which is this volcanic red stone, and it has symbolic attributes. I mean, it's red, so it is rich in iron. So then there's something about blood that kind of echoes that, and before it was believed that you see the blood of the earth. But also the way that it preserves heat. It's also interesting, or the way that it's porous, so it can hold water. On that particular one (exhibit), I wanted the objects to feel like they were sitting on this space, waiting to be unearthed.

SK: I'm curious, in hearing you talk a little bit about the role of black and white versus color, and I think about it a lot, especially with the objects too, that it feels very filmic. You're creating this world, and I think about how in someone's practice, color paintings could be a scene, whereas black and white (pieces are) a prop. I'm curious how you think about color in relation to those and then the objects? How do they speak to each other?

In progress oil and wood cut on muslin over panel

SS: We see in color, so I feel like whenever there's something black and white, it's like a (feeling) of distance, that it's a representation of this reality, so it can also be adding to the mystery of it. Also, I really like how it also works (like photography), where it's like a material exposure. It's like light, like a photon or something, but it's just a little mark. And then, especially the way that I try to define the body or the space, it almost seems like I'm trying to catch all the little points that are describing the space and the topography of the floor, the plants, or the body. With color it immediately brings it into your experience of heat or other things. And that's what I feel like thinking about, all those different lights. All those different light spectrums.

SK: Are you saying that color almost becomes like other senses?

SS: Yeah, yeah, yeah, or like, you know, like a thing that's invisible, would not be there. I think I like go there, sort of like it locks the space in time before I'm opening up like another space.

SK: So I hear you talking a lot about things that are invisible or cosmology, things that are really weightless. And for me, when I'm looking at your work, the materials that you're using are really heavy. So I'm curious, could you talk about those thoughts that you're sort of choosing wood and the ceramic. They all feel like they're really grounded, right? Like they're so… they have a lot of weight to them. And yet, you're talking about photons and light and things that really are moving and shape-shifting. So yeah, just some thoughts on that.

SS: Yeah, I mean, even this idea of the material right? We all tend to try to create a division between these things, like one of them is immaterial and material and (there is) this duality. But I feel an image has weight right? It has to, it touches your eyes whenever you're seeing it even though it's at a very different density. And I feel like these processes definitely highlight that as well because this is the point where matter and time becomes an image. It becomes this film of ink and information and in a particular set of order that then gives you this thing in your brain of an image. So I was really interested in that I mean like… Yeah, I definitely see what you mean with the weight.

I'm going to have these little [drawn, moveable] ladies, because [the show] is at a school of art [and dance] and the person, the curator, that invited me [to show there] is actually a dancer. So, you know, he's a dancer, he's interested in visual arts and in sound and music…and so because [of these things], I was like, “Why don't we do an animation?”

I was going to travel there [but] I'm not going to because it was super expensive, and their budget was…not [enough]. Anyway, I made all these [drawn, moveable] characters, and I said, well, since [at the gallery] they're dancers, let's have some ballerinas.

SK: Because part of it really does reflect your Mexican experience, right? Because if you think about it, you're talking about cathedrals, a lot of the expression really is about weight, right? There's even, though they're spiritual or invisible ideas, at least in the Catholic experience, like the visual experience, there's a lot of really heavy materials that are chosen to express. So in my mind, you're right in line with that. That experience that you had growing up. So, I was just thinking, have you considered using other materials too that are similar to the concepts that you're talking about?

SS: Well, I've been trying to play with bronze recently. Like this one is like 20 something pounds. I've actually kind of been looking at it so it doesn’t fall down *group laughter*. I've been thinking of playing with more light things. Like considering fabric, in a lot of ways they are more traditional where they are becoming like paintings and stuff like that. But it is just this night sky, you know? And I've done a piece, right now it's wrapped up. But it's a 40 foot sort of curtain. Where every single time that I get installed in a different space, it can be different. It can be almost like an architectural element, like an actual curtain or it can even be like a room all in itself.

SK: Is that the one that you showed at The Temporary (Art Center)?

SS: Yeah, and that one was just kind of like an altarpiece. I highlighted that, but I like the idea of thinking about making maybe a body work of architectural things that can feel like light, made out of just fabric, or sculpting with the fabric. It's not necessarily something that is on a structure, very light, I mean, like zip ties, and just kind of play with that thing. I haven't really done too much after that.

SK: I was thinking about earlier, you were talking about just this approach to not necessarily building science and religion, but having science and religion very front of mind in creation and thinking about black holes as this thing that takes in and then deletes information but also stores it in this way in a way that's similar to fire and seeing those images represented in different ways in your work is just really exciting to hear.

SS: Thank you. No, that feels so weird because I’ve been thinking of them, like they are other universes.

SK: Yeah, which is like, which is weird.

SS: Because they're gates to others, you know. And you couldn't really destroy the information. It's stored there. It's like, it's like another bottle.

SK: And it's like, in that tension between creation and destruction all these separate processes, things like fire and black holes, are we witnessing the lack of our language's ability to describe this one thing that happens?

SS: I really like that, especially because we have to create, math and, all these different languages to be able to access reality… I really like the way this philosopher talks about it, because right now, the world has some spherical shape. So there's things that are still not being able to be articulated, or talked about, or experienced. So it exists outside of this membrane. And then at some point, there's a little fissure, and then that unknown starts pouring into the known. And then it expands, it breathes, it can contract as well.

SK: Well I speak some Spanish and some Chinese, but not enough to think in it. And I think that what I've observed at least with English is that there are so many areas where there aren't good words for things especially when you get into this realm of cosmology and even deep feeling, right? And so I wonder about art as the language for that: how we pull some of that stuff down, not in a way that taints it or whatever, but just makes it able to be talked about and held.

SK: Going back to the question about color and black and white, but taking it to the objects as well, you talked a little bit about theatricality and staging, even just this idea of objects as props, appearing in images. I think of an artist who takes that to such an extreme like Matthew Barney and the whole film then taking place. I don't think you're going there with it, but do you have ideas of taking that relationship between the two further?

SS: The way that I started composing those 2D works, it's like I was doing all the schematics and all the work that was (with) me and the model and getting that information from the body. I'm more interested in seeing how everything can be connected. So maybe there can be a collaboration, like a choreographer can help me use these performances, it's also like the part where they can do symbolic things. Depending on what the narrative is, then you can have this experience or an event, right? Especially as it relates to the sound and that being a part of it. But then the connotation of that can also then become the 2D images. So then there's almost like a circle, it all kind of feeds off each other.

SK: I would love to hear more about your inclusion of figures in your work. I was already wondering, especially after hearing you talk about dance and choreography, so much of our conversation and the way you talk about your work has been through these massive concepts, like physics, social religion, and things that are bigger than us. But usually when you see a work of art with a person in it, it's hard to not try and scale it and see yourself. I think it's really interesting that you work with these figures, but with abstraction, and when you see some of them just have the hands or the circle all over the head. And so I think it's interesting that you choose to include the figure, but we still get the effect of these bigger ideas.

SS:I feel like I don't do faces, so the viewer can identify with whatever figure. Also, there's no gaze in the composition, so it gets essential as something like the figures could be looking at you or looking at each other. There's not necessarily specificity, but I feel like that also creates more of a… it's contingent to whoever is viewing it, because I also want to… the face can be such (a) powerful thing. That's a person then. Then it's a human, then it's an identity, so I want to get away from that and be able to see that it’s more like this force or vessel for all these different (things) like a channel.

SK: I think they feel a little supernatural in that way.

SS: Yeah, in that way. Or even like alien, you know, even like something you can see is, I guess from the past or the future, it's not this character taking place in this story.

SK: I appreciate it very much how, every time I've experienced them, I feel very open. They feel very timeless. They feel here, but they don't feel now. They feel cosmic. They feel mysterious. And for one I experience, I appreciate that I can get to unfold it a little bit.

SS: Thank you. I think that's the type of work that I think really also makes me the most interested, the one that I have to revisit or that I don't know. It comes also from how I would like to have this at home, and this idea of: I can keep coming back and finding new things in it. Also the things that are in my life change. It can be malleable because I think a lot of it, especially when you talk about this format or the history behind the syntax, it's always trying to organize reality to you and to have something that is not trying to do that. It's more like this invitation for you to exercise your own subjectivity.

SK: So Sergio, at the beginning of our talk, our discussion, you mentioned some of the foundational reading you've done in philosophers that have informed you. We're compiling kind of a quiet reading list for this season's visits. And we're asking our artists to tell us what are they reading right now, and in your case, maybe what performances you're seeing and dances, or what compositions have you been listening to? What's been informing this work most recently that you're working your way through?

SS: I've been really liking that book, Underland, by Robert Macfarlane, and he's got this book about all these different traditions that talk about how we relate to the inside of the earth, or unearthing, or even different phenomena like caves or underground water systems. I don't know, I really like the idea of the burial one, who's saying that we tend to put what's precious under the ground, because also there's this maybe unconscious idea that first of all, we come from this place where we have our material, our body has so many elements, and slowly we come out, and sometimes it comes inside, and sometimes they go back. And also, his book is really quiet, and I've been really loving that recently. Also that Italian philosopher Frederico Campagna. He has got one called Technic and Magic. He talks about how the relation of architecture to values and he uses different types of architecture systems from the past and how they're very concerned with inscribing their idea of the world, and the cosmology within the spaces they inhabit.

SK: Thank you everybody for your ideas and thank you most of all Sergio for opening up your space to us. *group claps*

SS: If you have any thoughts. If you have any complaints. *group laughs* It's cold.

SeekATL Members in the studio of Sergio Suarez

SK: Bringing Atlanta's artist community together to see these studios right after they've won this prestigious award (The Museum of Contemporary Art’s Working Artist Project) within our community is a fantastic way to bring our circle just a little bit closer. And then when you go see that show, you've seen some of the things in progress, you've talked to the artist, it changes the experience, right? Like when you're there, that's what I felt personally that when you're there and you get to see it, it brings us all a little bit closer. So thank you so much for being willing to open up your studio at this time.

Maria Korol