MATERIAL 2025

PROXYCO Gallery proposes an intergenerational gathering of three Mexican artists, bringing together a group of sketches made for the iconic paintings of Remedios Varo (1908-1963), a collection of ceramic pieces by Lucía Vidales (1986), and a series of needle felted textiles by Adela Goldbard (1979).
The selection revisits characters, details, and landscapes that reshape a surrealist imaginary situated both in Mexican history and everyday life. Emerging from the imagination and the subconscious, as well as from experiences in the country’s socio-political reality, the works are presented in thematic groups that challenge the naturalization of power relations, examine gender notions through craftwork, activate space-time displacements, and personify the coalition of human and more-than-human entities.
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Paulina Ascencio Fuentes (she/her/ella)
Ph.D. Student
Department of Anthropology
New York University


Remedios Varo (1908-1963) was a Spanish artist who became a naturalized Mexican. Varo's work represents the idea that "the dream world and the real world are the same," as she alchemically combined traditional techniques, Surrealist methods, and mystical philosophic inquiry into visionary dreamscapes. She was raised in Madrid, where she learned observational drawing from her father and later trained as a painter. In the 1930s, she moved to Barcelona and Paris, which offered liberation from academic painting and family expectations, exposing Varo to modernist thinkers and a close association with Surrealist artists. Her intimacy with the group is evident in an untitled 1935 collage created with Esteban Francés, Oscar Domínguez and Marcel Jean using the technique known as cadavre exquis (exquisite corpse).
In 1941, Varo emigrated to Mexico, fleeing fascism in France and Spain. There, she built a new creative life among other Mexican and expatriate artists and intellectuals, becoming especially close with Surrealist Leonora Carrington and connecting with Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, Octavio Paz, Wolfgang Paalen, Gordon Onslow Ford, among others. Varo’s first works from this period reflect the trauma of war and displacement, but by 1947, when she decided to stay in Mexico, her practice was flourishing. Her drawings and paintings during this time explore otherworldly narrative scenes characterized by a protagonist (often female) encountering supernatural forces. Like the magician in her painting, Varo aspired to reveal hidden metaphysical wonders through close observation and meticulous technique.
By the time of Varo’s death in 1963, the artist had created over 500 works, mostly produced in Mexico. Her work has been exhibited and acquired by museums such as MoMA in New York, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C., the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid, the Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires (MALBA), among others.

Lucía Vidales (1986) is a Mexican artist based in Monterrey, Mexico. Vidales’ work is concerned, above all, with painting. The body is recurrent as figure, as the painted gaze, and as the painting itself. Fragmented limbs often seem to emerge from, or sink into, the luminous or shadowy depths of her painterly surfaces. For Vidales, painting can transform time, our relationship with matter and how we experience our own bodies. She is interested in a liminal and polyvalent use of color and a fluid relationship with drawing. Her work is informed by the consequences of historical and colonial imaginaries as they continue to impact actual bodies and the body of painting itself. The beings that populate her paintings suggest the potential for confrontation, but seldom follow through. Instead, they play with humor or anxiety, or seek consolation from ancient wounds.
Vidales is an Art Professor at University of Monterrey (UDEM) in Mexico. She holds an MFA in Visual Arts from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and a BA in Visual Arts from "La Esmeralda" National School of Painting, Sculpture, and Printmaking of the National Institute of Fine Arts and Literature (INBAL); and has been awarded the Jóvenes Creadores grant three times by the Ministry of Culture in Mexico. Her recent solo exhibitions include: Museo Cabañas, Guadalajara, Mexico (2023-24); PROXYCO Gallery, New York (2021); Galería Karen Huber, Mexico City (2021); PEANA, Monterrey, Mexico (2021); Taka Ishii Gallery, Tokyo (2020); Galería de Arte Mexicano, Mexico City (2019); among others. Group shows include: The Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art has commissioned a large-scale installation by Vidales for its ninth annual Atrium Project (2024-25), 15th FEMSA Biennial, Guanajuato, Mexico (2024); Ballroom Marfa, Marfa, Texas (2023); Sapar Contemporary [at Piero Atchugarry Gallery], Miami (2020-21); Sala de Arte Público Siqueiros, Mexico City (2020); and Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2019).


Adela Goldbard (1979) is a Mexican transdisciplinary artist-scholar based in Providence, Rhode Island, and Mexico City. Goldbard's work depicts the results of her research on how radical community performances can subvert hegemonic narratives, while also exploring the transformative potential of violence and destruction as aesthetic tools in the resistance against power. She is especially interested in how collectively building, staging, and destroying has the potential to generate critical thinking and social transformation.
Goldbard is an Associate Professor at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) and fellow of the National System of Art Creators (SNCA) from Mexico’s Endowment for the Arts. She holds an MFA in Sculpture from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) and a BA in Hispanic Literature from the National University of Mexico (UNAM). She has had over 25 solo shows including a mid-career retrospective at Centro de la Imagen in Mexico City (2024). Recent art commissions include a pyrotechnic performance for the Pomona College Museum of Art (Getty Institute's initiative PST, 2017), a pyrotechnic play with/for the Mexican community of La Villita, Chicago (University of Illinois, 2019-20), and a socially-engaged art project with/for the P'urhépecha community of Arantepacua (FEMSA Biennial, 2020-21). She is currently working on the post-production of her opera prima (a participatory film set in the Peruvian Andes, created in collaboration with the Quechua communities of Chumbivilcas), on a commission for the Boston Public Art Triennial and on three solo shows taking place in 2025.