Open to the public 11 am–7 pm
Durango 124
Col. Roma Norte
06700, Mexico City
+52 55 3967 6301

Hoffmann + Maler + Wallenberg is delighted to announce Passing Through, an exhibition of fifteen new paintings on canvas by the Spanish Mexican artist Rafael Uriegas. This marks the first time the gallery is presenting an exhibition in a temporary space outside its home in Nice, France. Coinciding with Zona Maco, Latin America’s most significant contemporary art fair, the presentation will take place February 4–9, 2025, in a historic Art Nouveau townhouse built in 1914 in Mexico City’s Roma neighborhood.

The show’s title highlights the brief duration of the exhibition, the ephemeral nature of life, and art’s ability to guide us through visions and inspirations. Uriegas is best known for his fresco murals that dynamically engage with the architecture of their surroundings, but this exhibition shifts the focus to his works on canvas. These paintings take a more introspective approach. They emphasize the artist’s focus on the relationship between abstraction and figuration, offering an overview of his evolving artistic language. Uriegas’s use of color is likewise of great importance in both his murals and canvases, immersing the viewer in harmony and calm. Uriegas is influenced by a wide range of sources, from the primal imagery of cave paintings to Fra Angelico’s luminous colors, Paul Klee’s innovative play with line and form, and Francesco Clemente’s highly symbolic imagery.

Caballo con Pájaro (Horse with Bird, 2024) exemplifies Uriegas’s distinctive muted palette and reflective style. The painting portrays a blue horse and a delicate white bird, set against a dreamlike backdrop of organic, leafy shapes. As the artist notes, the somber horse symbolizes humanity or the human soul, while the bird represents the spirit, together evoking a poetic idea: the spirit guiding the soul as though riding it.

Espíritu (Spirit, 2024) is a symbolic meditation on identity and spirituality. At first glance, the painting seems to depict plant-like forms inspired by tropical vegetation. However, closer inspection reveals what might be human eyes, arms, and legs embedded within the shapes, suggesting a hallucinatory experience of a nighttime forest, where fear and imagination blur to create a surreal, mystical atmosphere. This work bridges the natural and the supernatural, the real and the imagined.

Pareja (Couple, 2024), the smallest painting in the exhibition, draws aesthetic connections to Uriegas’s large-scale murals. Its dynamic yet contemplative composition approaches a near-abandonment of recognizable figures. With poetic fluidity, it conjures an intertwining dance of human and floral forms, symbolizing shared rhythms and vital relations.

What sets Uriegas apart is his ability to speak to the present without losing sight of the past. His work doesn’t demand explanation; it invites you to look and keep looking. In a moment when art is often tethered to overt statements or fleeting trends, Uriegas’s approach feels timeless—a pure expression that is endlessly rewarding.

Rafael Uriegas (b. 1982, Málaga, Spain) lives and works in Cholula, Mexico. He earned his BFA in 2008 from the Escuela Nacional de Pintura, Escultura y Grabado “La Esmeralda” in Mexico City, and his MFA in 2013 from the Universidad Autónoma del Estado de Morelos in Cuernavaca, Mexico.