Traces of an unseen fire: Sergio Suarez

21 June - 16 August 2025

  • Sergio Suárez

    Traces of an unseen fire

  • Traces of an unseen fire

    Sergio Suarez

    Fire, in its perpetual becoming, does not only consume: it also reveals, transforms, and leaves barely legible marks in the sliver of the visible. Traces of an Unseen Fire, Sergio Suárez’s solo exhibition at MOCA GA, is an exercise in speculative archaeology—a cartography of the sacred that seeps through layers of time, matter, and language, where printmaking, ceramics, and cosmological imagery intertwine to question the possible futures buried within the present.

     

    Suárez operates in the porous boundary between the sacred and the corporeal, between ancestral gestures and the contemporary gaze. His prints exist halfway between devotional iconography and astral schematics; they are thresholds to cosmologies sedimented in strata of cosmic memory. Illegible liturgies that remind us all narrative constructions are provisional.

     

    Each crystallized wave and every ceramic fragment is a topography of touch. In the constellations of forms—evoking both funerary archaeological traces and the geometric patterns of a collapsing star—lies a visual syntax that does not distinguish between the metaphysical and the empirical, between clay and pixel: a syncretism that is not reconciliation but a controlled erosion of the boundaries between categories.

     

    At a historical moment when the future appears to us as a horizon in flames, Traces of an Unseen Fire reminds us that fire is not a metaphor but an agent of chemical metamorphosis. It does not purify; it transmutes. And that we must transmute the rubble of history into a narrative that allows us to inhabit chaos without domesticating it—an ontology of the residual that understands the past not as origin but as an active geological layer where time does not only dissolves, it will also solidify the begining of something else, something we may not yet know how to name: traces of another world.

     

    Review: ‘Traces of an Unseen Fire’ resists presumption through new mythos at MOCAGA

  • Vestigios de un fuego desapercibido

    Sergio Suarez

    El fuego, en su perpetuo devenir, no solo consume: también revela, transforma y deja marcas apenas legibles en la ranura de lo visible. Vestigios de un fuego desapercibido, la exposición individual de Sergio Suárez en MOCA GA, es un ejercicio de arqueología especulativa, una cartografía de lo sagrado que se filtra entre capas de tiempo, materia y lenguaje, donde el grabado, la cerámica y la imagen cosmológica se entrelazan para interrogarnos sobre los futuros posibles que yacen enterrados en el presente.

     

    Suárez opera en la porosidad de lo sacro y lo corpóreo, entre el gesto ancestral y la mirada contemporánea. Sus grabados en madera están a medio camino entre la iconografía devocional y los esquemas astrales; son umbrales a cosmologías sedimentadas en estratos de memoria cósmica. Liturgias ilegibles que nos recuerdan que todas las construcciones narrativas son provisionales.

     

    Cada onda cristalizada y cada fragmento cerámico es una topografía del tacto. En las constelaciones de formas —que evocan tanto rastros arqueológicos funerarios como los esquemas geométricos del colapso de una estrella— yace una sintaxis visual que no distingue entre lo metafísico y lo teórico, entre el barro y el píxel: un sincretismo que no es reconciliación, sino una erosión controlada de los límites entre categorías.

     

    En un momento histórico donde el futuro se nos presenta como un horizonte en llamas, Vestigios de un fuego desapercibido nos recuerda que el fuego no es metáfora, sino un agente de metamorfosis química. No purifica; transmuta. Y que es necesario transmutar los escombros de la historia en una narrativa que nos permita habitar el caos sin domesticarlo: una ontología de lo residual que entiende al pasado no como origen, sino como capa geológica aún activa, donde el tiempo no solo desgasta, también solidificará el principio de otra cosa que quizás aún no sabemos nombrar: trazos de otro mundo.

     

    Reseña: ‘Trazas de un fuego invisible’ resiste la presunción a través de un nuevo mito en MOCAGA
  • About Sergio Suárez

    About Sergio Suárez

    Sergio Suárez (B.1995) is a Mexican-born, Atlanta-based visual artist and printmaker. He graduated the Ernest G. Welch School of Art and Design in 2021 with a B.F.A in Drawing Painting and Printmaking. His practice, prompted by an interest in translation, uses different traditions of making to construct a visual language concerned with syncretism, temporality, and the porosity between objects, images, and structures.

     

    His work has been shown around Atlanta, in spaces like Hawkins Headquarters, Whitespace Gallery, Day & Night Projects, THE END Project Space, ShowerHaus Gallery, the Consulate General of Mexico in Atlanta, Take it Easy Gallery, and the Atlanta Contemporary. Internationally his work has been included in several group exhibitions such as the Woolwich Contemporary Print Fair in London, the Haugesund Internasjonal Relief Festival in Norway, OPED Space in Tokyo, and the Ionian Arts Center in Greece; where he was an artist in residency in 2017 and 18.

     

    His work is also included in the SGCI archives of the Zuckerman Museum. He lives and works in Atlanta Georgia.