Clandestine Acts

Johan Galué is, first and foremost, a great artist: his works prove it and his conversation certifies it. Circumstances have led him to work in the police force of Maracaibo, in administrative offices that have given him the time and support to devote himself to art, from painting and drawing to restoring the frescoes of the Basilica of Our Lady of Chiquinquirá. In view of the freedom his duties allow, he is a very fortunate man.

Ever since he was a student at the University of Zulia, Johan focused his training on drawing, the source of the characters that populate his work. Rendered in an almost hyper-realistic way, with painstaking chiaroscuro on bodies and faces, those characters are nonetheless set in diffuse contexts, floating or hovering, suggesting that the truthful does not always exist in reality as we strive to identify it.

His latest work centers precisely on this: dream-like worlds where imagination reigns supreme. As Johan himself notes, his images are seldom drawn from the harsh reality he observes as a police officer, but rather from free associations that spring from his daily practice—a humble artistic practice grounded in his constant exchange of ideas with fellow artists, poets, and musicians of Maracaibo.