Diego Juarez
I work between painting, sculpture, and poetry, incorporating found material from my immediate surroundings to depict the landscape through the social, political, and economic systems that produce it. Gravitating toward sites of transition, I form deep relationships through observation and time spent writing. To prioritize the material realities of these sites, I incorporate poetic gestures of care, such as sewing, collaging, and gestural abstraction, into my process. The resulting work embodies landscapes as sites of hidden labor, political upheaval, and environmental disruption. My sentimental feelings toward a place symbolically tie material to process.
I paint with material as an active collaborator, creating space for accidents to guide the final result. Abrasion, staining, and rubbing fully incorporate all my materials into incongruous, abstract surfaces, each holding a distinct record of time. My surfaces resist illusionistic space in favor of process, material, and touch. Fixed subjectivities and ideas of value are reconfigured, enabling more expansive and poetic forms of meaning.
