5 Standout Shows to See at Small Galleries This May
Maxwell Rabb
Joaquín Reyes, “Mirar Desde Frente”
Isabel Croxatto Galería, Santiago
Through May 24
Joaquín Reyes began his career as a video artist, studying at Finis Terrae University in Chile, but a formative experience assisting painter Ismael Frigerio—and later studying under Natalia Babarovic—led him to pursue painting. Reyes’s background in cinema lends his latest body of work a charged theatricality through vividly patterned paintings with flatly portrayed figures and faces at odd, sometimes humorous, angles. A selection of these works is on view in “Mirar Desde Frente” at Santiago’s Isabel Croxatto Galería.
Reyes always starts his paintings by standing directly in front of the canvas with his arm at a right angle, repeating gestures outward from the center in opposing directions to create a patterned background. His subjects are drifting bodies and disembodied heads in countryside or suburban scenes, reminiscent of those of David Hockney. In En el Campo (2024), a man in a blue jumpsuit pets a cow, while Gloria (2024) depicts a woman sunbathing with eight sets of hands appearing to hold her up on a striped blanket. Reyes’s surreal paintings often interject perpendicular figures among crowds of kaleidoscopically clothed figures, as seen in Cielo estrellado (2024).
The Santiago-based artist graduated from Finis Terrae University in Chile with a BA in visual arts. His work has been featured in shows at the Chilean National Museum of Fine Arts in Santiago, the National Library of Buenos Aires, and Savvy Contemporary in Berlin.
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