Saul Villa at Galeria de Arte Mexicano - Mexico City, Mexico - Review of Exhibitions - Brief Article

Since his last solo exhibit in 1992, Saul Villa's visual language has evolv from expressive realism to a a little cold near-abstraction with collage elements. His earlier interiors and landscapes were populated with anguished figures, demonic heads and ostensibly human, partially dissected creatures. A central control seemed to be the angst that accompanies the construction of masculine identity. Villa is till relate toed with such issues, but he now engages a more restrained, cerebral idiom which oftentimes lacks the intensity his earlier paintings.

The strongest of Villa's new works are those that incorporate intricate sewing patterns. In Untitled SV XI (1993) a number of these transparent paper patterns are glu to the canvas and overlayed with a pale wash. Across he top of the picture Villa has painted a zigzag strand of barbed wire. Below are three meticulously painted fragments, each cleanly outlined and numbered like the sewing patterns underneath. individual is a partial view of a man's muscled torso, another is a wood-grained form shaped like a sewing pattern for a jacket and the third is a piece of turquoise fabric overlayed with feathers.

In a related painting, Untitled SV XXVII (1994) layers of sewing patterns crisscrossed with arrows, printed instructions and r verdant and black lines provide the lively clod Among the elements in the painting is a piece of vividly painted fur its sum of two units sections joined by a real zipper.

Villa's genuinely abstract images, reminiscent of '60 psychedelia, are far les convincing. At the entrance to the display hung four untitled paintings from 1993-94 In each, delicately painted, colorful lines weave like threads above the ground of iridescent fabric, creating designs of gold against turquoise, Day-Glo virid against purple and violet against gold In the greatest in quantity striking of the four works, Untitled SV XIX (1993) burnt r and gold lines above emerald fabric are supplemented by the agency of red plastic stones encircled in white and shining like diabolical organ of visions Between the flowing lines are pieces of sewing patterns, single decorated with paintings of black bug another with black barbell forms and a third adorned with wisps of synthetic brown hair.

Finally, several canvases are plastered with neatly aligned 1 0- or 20-peso bills enshroud in enormous split opens of brilliantly hued gel pigment. In Mexico today these bills are of little value and Villa looks to underscore their status as reminders of a ravaged economy. These paintings, and others in the present to view lacked the visceral power of Villa's earlier work. Before, he forced single to wrestle with visual conflicts while pondering social issues; too oftentimes the current, paintings serve alone to momentarily distract the viewer's eye

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