Sergio García, an illustration to be defined

Madrid,

More than once he explained that he conceives the supports where he works as battle -graphic fields (Campal).

Sergio García (Guadix, 1967) adds three decades of experience as an illustrator; The restlessness to draw was born very soon: after reading in his childhood novels of the coyote, comics of the Vértice publishing house or those of French and Belgian origin that edited the children’s magazine Cavall Fortonce he moved with his family to Catalonia. Among them those of Franchinthat he copied again and again and that he was promoted to elaborate his own fanzine with a friend.

It would be in the mid -nineties when he would undertake that journey without turning: for textbooks and also for the magazine Vignetteswhich welcomed its surreal series Ralph Edisonvery well received among the readers, so much that they demanded that publication that allowed him to function in longer stories. They then proposed to devise manga to the European, and that was the germ of Tackwhich would constitute its beginning by narrating in the comic and that made it known in France.

There he posted with the Dargaud publishing house, for which he made Martian Geography (1996-1998) and Dexter London (2002-2005), the first very praised by critics and the second sold, although Garcia does not consider her the best of her proposals. In the neighboring country he could also make contact with the Oubapo collective, which defended the most free and experimental concepts of the comic; Together with one of its members, screenwriter Lewis Trondheim, signed just over two decades ago The three pathsthe first of his pieces in which he investigated the options of multilineal narrative, an obvious evolution regarding the tradition of a single story.

And that job, once again, made it possible The New Yorkerhe proposed to shape a version of it for his children’s publisher; This was done in 2015, in Lost in NYC, that raised a lot of enthusiasm in America and opened the doors of the literary supplement of The New York Times And then of the same The New Yorker. His are some of his covers.

Since then the Enlightenment has gained ground in its production above the comic, and there is one reason: the language of the latter is more conditioned, while the first area allows you to receive artistic influences, greater complexity.

In any case, their codes continue to deploy halfway between both areas, without vocation to define themselves strictly, letting themselves be soaked by the art of cultures that bequeathed powerful images (such as Egyptians and Greeks) and also by the rupturist slope of the avant -garde. When his works overflow the limits of the page, he remembers that the mural drawing already existed in antiquity, and has dedicated works to Guernica either Las Meninas.

Sergio García. The line that builds. Cayón Gallery

Until May 30, this Granada author for the first time exhibits his creations in the Cayón Gallery, in which it is also the first sample that the Madrid room provides to this discipline. This exhibition is called “The line that builds” and precisely deepens the close closeness of his works with the plastic arts: based on a very linear style in his forms (as expected for his formation and his usual use of the iPad, and applying lines always of the same thickness) creates pieces with autonomous value that, unlike the usual developments of the Enlightenment, are presented in large formats. That exploration was part of the fault of his National Illustration Award three years ago; The jury stressed that Sergio Expand the book format, carrying the graphic narration to other places, and multiplies the possibilities of illustration with images that alone narrate.

Indeed, there is also a narrative channel in its illustrations: it is born from the syntactic possibilities of graphic space. As he analyzed on the occasion of his entry into the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of Granada, he is interested in drawing-draft, multilineal narrative, the adapted space, the containers of stories (simultaneous narrative structures) and the expanded formats. The sequentiality of the comic has transferred it to this other field, thanks in part to the verticality, and of course to that good management of the line in all directions. As Francisco Baena points out in the catalog for Cayón, To get all the forms, lights, shadows, spaces, textures, the entire matter of the world out of it. To supplant painting.