The Contemporary Art Modern Project is pleased to present No Hay Banda (There is No Band), a solo exhibition featuring Cuban-born, Miami based artist Filio Galvez, who creates with nature. Drawing similarities to artist Jean Arp, who in 1932, as a Dada pioneer, created his Papiers Dechirés series (Collages Arranged According to Laws of Chance) as a visual experiment where the artist surrendered control of the composition, recording infinite patterns of probabilities.
In No Hay Banda, and the works, Galvez in the releasing of artistic control to nature, steps back and affords nature the divine power of creator, albeit under his ever watchful eye. This series, similar to Arp’s Collages, challenges traditional techniques in painting while focusing on social and environmental issues, considering Miami’s weather patterns, birds above, bugs below, all who traverse his canvases sitting comfortably under a mango tree in his garden, bringing in a scenario quite reminiscent to the Garden of Eden, where the apple has been replaced and re-flavored by a mango. Although he has stepped back one cannot but recognize that all of this is happening because he has put the players in motion - again drawing similarities to creation myths where there is an unseen force driving the action - this is Galvez’s role in the work - the watchful creator.
Galvez begins his process by deliberately avoiding a large percentage of artistic control as he lays canvases outside his North Miami studio to be marked by the local vegetation as they drop from trees, and are swept across the canvas by the wind; he allows the markings to cure over time before carefully restoring and varnishing his canvases to reveal soft earthy tones and organic details caused by the earth, that are superior to human mark-making. Inspired by nature, Galvez presents himself as a researcher; studying, collecting, and displaying his findings. Each painting contains a randomly arranged constellation formed by microorganisms and captures the natural laws and patterns of the universe.
Being an artist very present in modernity, he serves not only as the creator but also he who stimulates the interpretation by focusing on the shades and shadows found in the work, enhancing them through artistic practice; Galvez also then steps into the comfortable role of teacher, leading through meditative landscapes of the abstract, somehow similar to cave paintings in their minimal color palette where the focus was marking existence - Galvez brings us back to this primal condition of our existence, our understanding of time and space - all the while deeply drawing from Jungean concepts of the relationship between the physical, spiritual and the symbol.