Juan Gálvez builds a painting practice shaped by the street, graphic imagery and the narrative power of montage. In his works, animals, portraits, still lifes, urban scenes, symbols and geometric fragments coexist within compositions of intense color and strong visual presence. Each painting seems to operate as a system of associations, where images from different origins meet, collide and produce new meanings.
Born in Viña del Mar, Chile, Gálvez is a painter and muralist with professional training in graphic design. Since 2015, he has developed a consistent body of work across different areas of the graphic and visual arts, bringing together studio painting, mural projects and urban intervention. He is currently based in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where he works full-time on his personal painting practice and projects related to muralism.
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His recent production is mainly developed in acrylic on canvas and wood. In works such as Gansos I, Limas, Frutos de Peumo and La joya real, the observation of nature is shaped by an expressive brushstroke and a vibrant palette. In other pieces, such as El Engaño, Puke, Posto Jocel III and La vida cotidiana, the city becomes a stage for tension, memory and estrangement. His production also includes portraits interrupted by blocks of color and graphic signs, where the face ceases to be a stable image and becomes a surface crossed by disruptions, symbols and possible readings.
An important part of his recent work is organized through fragmented compositions, where recognizable figures coexist with fields of color, geometric patterns and small visual icons. This logic of montage connects his painting to a contemporary sensitivity marked by the accumulation of images, popular culture and urban language. In the context of Como por arte de magia, Gálvez reveals the image as a constructed artifice: an apparition made of cuts, contrasts, pictorial decisions and visual frictions. In contrast to an increasingly homogeneous visual culture, his work insists on showing the trick, making visible the hand, the process and the imagination behind each image.
