Golgo: Flesh Blood Substance Blurs the Line Between Art and Anatomy

Golgo, the artist also known as Andreas Hijar, had his first solo London exhibition late last year at the London based gallery, Lazarides. Showing Flesh Blood Substance, a series of anatomical oil paintings, marked a significant period in the painter’s career. Golgo, who is mainly based in Los Angeles via Mexico City, has centered on his creative inspiration on his Mexican roots.

The folklore, pop culture, and graffiti of Mexico inspired his early work which often featured wrestlers, saints and other worldly cultural icons. But the works in this latest exhibition focus on what lies beneath. The oil paintings are mainly blood red against black darkness. They feel reminiscent of x-rays yet livelier and eerier. The Flesh Blood Substance canvases are a bold cogitation on the place between life and death, the inner workings of the human body and its eventual and inevitable decomposition.

Flesh is described by most dictionaries as a soft substance found between the skin and bones. Blood both gives and takes life. And substance itself is said to refer to the real physical matter of which a person or thing consists and which has a tangible, solid presence. The artist has stripped away all of these dermal layers to focus on what lies beneath and within the human body. Golgo moves from one canvas to another, provocatively removing skin from the human form only to describe the veins and sinew left exposed with technically exquisite fluidity.