Raúl Aguilar
Metal Heart

July 10 to August 28th, 2021

Galerie Nicolas Robert is pleased to present Metal Heart, a collection of paintings by Raúl Aguilar. Centering his research on the concept of heartbreak, Aguilar’s recent body of work explores the ways in which we make feelings public. Using t-shirt materials as the primary substrate, the work explores the relationship between painting and body, focusing on the narratives that construct our emotional selves. Evident in the way the unstretched fabric is treated, softness is the key throughout this series. Softness as a desire to be treated carefully, be held with love and be seen with compassion. Frozen in time, the cartoony characters that inhabit these images are experiencing their little conundrums. Walking the thin line between catharsis and doom, the paintings that Aguilar presents are attempts at learning how to be vulnerable in front of others.

Raúl Aguilar received his MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University in 2021 and his BFA from Concordia University in 2014. His work has been been subject to solo exhibitions at Centre Clark (2017), TAP Art Space (2018), and Egret Egress (2019). In 2019 his work was also selected to be part of the Bienal de Pintura Rufino Tamayo, in México City. Aguilar also participated in the 2019 Banff Artist in Residence Program.