The Pressure of Time

In the work of Leonel Salguero (Ciudad Obregón, Sonora, 1989), an image rarely belongs to a single moment, nor does it settle into a single meaning. His paintings emerge from disparate sources: an object observed repeatedly, a found image, an specific moment in art history, an accident within his own process, or an unexpected form or encountered in everyday life. Salguero observes, reproduces, and reconsiders these subjects through the act of painting. In doing so, time becomes not only a subject, but a condition of what we see. In _The Pressure of Time_, his first solo exhibition at BODEGA, time becomes visible through its effects: light that gradually alters the appearance of a surface; erosion that renders an image nearly illegible; traces of an earlier painting that remains underneath a previous one; or an artwork that tells a story of damage and a subsequent restoration. Ornamental frames, paint tubes, and accidental reflections become points of departure for considering not only what a painting represents, but the material and historical circumstances that make its existence possible. Salguero's practice is grounded in sustained, almost cyclical observation. Shifts in opacity, transparency, speed of execution, and light allow his images to move between precision and ambiguity. Everyday objects are given the attention and intensity more commonly associated with portraiture, taking on a presence that feels at once strange and familiar. His paintings seem to hold several moments at once: the instant something was seen, the time spent painting it, and the histories that came before it.