Theo Guédez (1983, Caracas). Lives and works between Caracas and Europe.
“The pictorial proposal of Theo Guédez, self-taught artist and tattoo artist, revolves mainly around subcultures and their context. Inspired by Art Brut, he conceives a language that goes against the current of academia, responding to a personal motivation derived from lived experiences. His work is presented to us as an intricate vernacular cartography that portrays a complex territory undermined by internal tensions -social and economic-, from which he conceives a distinctive reality, centered on a system of representation of his own. His creative practice revolves around the perception of the neighborhood and its cultural idiosyncrasy. A reflection that operates from the most honest desire to give visibility to the various sectors located on the margins of urban centers. Theo's work thus distances itself from traditional genres and aesthetic formulisms to trace another history of painting, one that is located at the limits of current subcultures. The energetic and spontaneous neo-expressionism of his compositions documents, from the most legitimate attachment to the neighborhood and the heroic spirit of its inhabitants, a mixed and contradictory essence, represented in resounding images that evidence the sense of community and the nature of its collective structure.
Even in the global distance and, precisely because of the need to recover a genealogy of stories, landscapes, portraits, customs and common objects, treasured in his archive of memories, the artist gives us, as a visual chronicler, a way of (re)creating through imagination, his rootedness to the context. Each image becomes a graphic document that occupies a significant and symbolic place in what seems close to an autobiographical narrative. However, his pictorial representations build the reference of a contemporary iconography in broader terms where the Caribbean and Latin American syncretism are perceived as a constant state of mind. His solo exhibitions include: Donde los sueños abundan, 2023, Beatriz Gil gallery, Caracas, and Del Caribe con amor, Adhesivo Contemporary, Mexico City. She has also shown in independent spaces in Zurich, Switzerland. Collectively exhibited in La vuelta, To take out, in 2022 and Somos caribes, Cerquone Gallery, 2018, both in Caracas. She has published numerous fanzines and collaborated for other artists in Paris, Zurich, Barcelona and Caracas.”
Ruth Auerbach