Nacho Reyes

Nacho doesn't sit still. He skates, he paints, he makes documentary films, he reads tarot, he used to do competitive gymnastics, and he once served as Creative Director of the Mexican Teachers Union — which is the kind of line that makes you stop and reread. Born and based in Mexico City, he's the rare artist whose résumé reads like five different people's, and somehow it all makes sense.

At Lola, his series draws from the bold palette of Mexican emotional architecture — the vivid, saturated planes of color made iconic by Barragán, Goeritz, and the modernist tradition that turned walls into feelings. The two pieces on view translate that architectural language into expressionist painting: energetic, playful, built to pull you into a space where imagination takes over. There are women, there are cascades of color, and there's a sense that the materials themselves are in motion — Nacho describes his process as watching paint melt as he applies it, even when nothing is liquid. That tension between control and surrender is the work.

His formal training in painting came through mentors José Barbosa, Toro Amillategui, and Ramón Peñaloza, who guided him into the expressionist language that now anchors everything he does. But his path to the canvas was anything but direct. He studied music first. Then communication and creativity. He's produced and edited documentaries, built digital campaigns with a socio-environmental focus, and currently works as a humanitarian professional creating fundraising campaigns. He co-coordinated exhibitions with the collective Quinto Piso. His films have screened at documentary festivals. The man does not have one gear.

His friends call him Chihuahua — on account of his eyes. He's deeply into Jungian analytical psychology, which led him to study tarot in depth. He skateboards at 38, and considers it both a guilty pleasure and an aerobic sport, especially the acrobatic tricks. He's a former cheerleading expert. If he were a flavor of ice cream, he'd be guayaba — because it's the best Mexican fruit and he loves the color. If he were an object, he'd be shoes, because he never stops walking and traveling. And if his life were a movie, it would be called La Vie de Bohème, after Kaurismäki, because the humor is the point.

His own artist statement puts it best: life is a game of light and time, and sometimes things actually come true. At Lola, they do — in bright, unapologetic color.

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