Formas Oníricas

Johansson Projects presents FORMAS ONÍRICAS by Alexis Mata, the artist’s first solo exhibition with the gallery. Mata challenges our notions of wealth, beauty, and success through dichotomies of ideas and mediums. Blending his personal experiences with cosmological themes, his work highlights the battle of good and evil, and the duality of material and spiritual. Born in Mexico City, his work bridges the social and political, by questioning the violence and inequalities of his native home.

Mata’s approach combines the classical and contemporary by using the latest technology along with traditional art making. His latest body of work, FORMAS ONÍRICAS, is based on poetic texts which were transformed into imagery with the help of the AI program, Midjourney. The artist then further transmutes these digital renditions through an analog process of oil painting – thus blurring the lines between the virtual and the real. The result is a pixelated and glitched representation of the familiar.

Prompted by internal contemplations and dream analysis, Mata explores how thoughts and feelings are generated – and whether they can be shaped by artificial intelligence. FORMAS ONÍRICAS is his most personal work to date, with each form and color expressing the artist’s internal narrative.

Each painting tells a story – a poem, a riddle, a haiku – through abstract forms and colors. What we perceive is not an objective reality, but rather an oneiric view of our world.

The exhibit can be experienced online June 15 – August 30, 2023

With a background in urban space interventions, Alexis Mata navigates a multitude of media ranging from collage, drawing, painting, installation, and digital media. His work is permeated by a strong social and political burden, referencing death, violence, beauty, and Manichaeism (a former major religion founded in the 3rd century AD by the Parthian prophet Mani, in the Sasanian Empire. Manichaeism teaches an elaborate dualistic cosmology describing the struggle between a good, spiritual world of light, and an evil, material world of darkness). Informed by living in a country plagued with inequalities, violence and simulacra, Mata’s work aims to encourage social critique amongst viewers.

Mata transforms classical and contemporary images to look cut, glitched or pixelated as a way to investigate aesthetics and perception through visual archetypes. The result is a juxtaposition between the image and what is perceived, and prompts questions about socially accepted norms, representation, and digital-to-analog processes that result in new images with new meanings.

His latest series Espejismos de Origen (Mirages of Origin) explores individual and collective identification processes concerning official histories and national mythologies.

Alexis Mata (b. 1981, Mexico City, MX) is a multidisciplinary artist who lives and works in Mexico City. Mata has managed to navigate through a multitude of media ranging from collage, drawing, painting, installation, and digital art. Mata has been exhibited in different individual and collective exhibitions at a national and international level, including Carrillo Gil Art Museum (CDMX, MX), MUCA Roma (CDMX, MX), MAIA Contemporary (CDMX, MX), Soze Gallery (Los Angeles, CA) Fu Gallery (Miami,FL), Soil Gallery (Seattle,WA), Goldshteyn-Saatorty (Paris,FR), Galeria Nueva (Madrid,ES), Parlor Gallery (Ashbury Park,NJ) & Brick Lane Gallery (London, UK).