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“I have always been amazed at the way an ordinary observer
lends so much more credence and attaches so much more
importance to waking events than to those occurring in dreams.”

-André Breton, Manifestoes of Surrealism

Martín Nuñez has spent the past two decades carving out a surrealist wonderland in the sprawling corridors of Casa Amarilla, a home built by his grandfather in 1936 in the Guadalupe Tepeyac colonia of Mexico City. He’s filled this vibrant space with delicate oil paintings, wooden assemblages, and carved resin sculptures that merge lush tropicália, the zoomorphic figures of ancient Egyptian art, extraterrestrial beings, pre-Colombian deities, the hybridized fantasies of Hieronymus Bosch, Giuseppe Arcimboldo and Bruegel, and references to his own storied history in Mexico’s skateboarding culture, in a practice that might best be described as punk phantasmagoria.

“Surrealism is often associated with a specific time in history, referring to a type of art described by Breton, but that vision has been around for a long time,” says Nuñez. “Humans have always dreamed, imagined beyond. We are on the same page.”

For Martín Nuñez: Lost Paradise, the Mexico City-based artist will make his solo painting debut in an intimate gallery space that invokes Casa Amarilla. The exhibition’s paintings encapsulate a series of overlapping narratives, dreamscapes and figures that occupy a paradisiacal realm where nature reclaims the land, machines merge with man, and hybridized animals seek out harmonious commune with human, celestial, and alien life forms. It’s a world that seems to foretell a post-pandemic climate in which the Senate Intelligence Committee emphatically requests a UFO report from the Pentagon, in which bobcats, bears, and wolves take up residence in the hardscapes of Yosemite National Park, and in which hyperbolic chaos is replaced by an uncanny order. In Nuñez’s paintings, hope and sincerity are not fodder for cynics, but the tools for building a world without fear. It’s a world in which the strange and phantasmagorical are not met with a scream, but rather an embrace—or a dance.

“I use my painting to escape from all the madness and chaos around me, to peek into another dimensional reality, because our reality is often much madder and more chaotic,” says Nuñez, who started drawing hybrid animals and extraterrestrial characters in his grade school notebooks. His painting career started in earnest after an old friend of the family who loved Renaissance painting—“His technique was sort of an updated Botticelli,” says Nuñez—took the adolescent skater on as an apprentice. Nuñez went on to become a professional skateboarder, but also studied at the Escuela Nacional de Pintura, Escultura y Grabado (or La Esmeralda) under the acclaimed Mexican conceptual artist Abraham Cruzvillegas.

“Martín’s relaxed style moves from nervous quick strokes to delicate tiny figurative details over wooden boards,” says Cruzvillegas, who ran his own studio out of Casa Amarilla for six years. “Surfing reality, smooth and easy, in the long term Martín found the way to create his two major works: a skate park around the corner from his beloved Casa Amarilla, and a series of minute paintings where everything collides—dreams, myths, puns, punk, fun, and skateboarding.”

As the name suggests, Casa Amarilla is painted primarily with yellow (and some green, blue, and pink) accents. It’s situated near Tlatelolco, which in Pre-Columbian times was home to the most important market in Mesoamerica. It was also the site of a bloody student massacre at the hands of the Mexican government in October of 1968. Equally close is the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe, which is where, in 1531, the Virgin Mary is said to have appeared four times to Juan Diego, the first indigenous saint of the Americas. In other words, this is a place filled with life, death, and perhaps a little magic.

“It’s easy to be inspired by such a light-filled space,” says Nuñez. “I find inspiration in simple things from my everyday life: it could be a skateboarding trick, spending time with my kids, or the fresh air of the afternoon. Sometimes what matters is the state of mind to appreciate your surroundings.”

Martín Nuñez: Lost Paradise offers a chance for us to envision a time and space in which man, animal, and life forces beyond have a shot at redemption. Or, as Cruzvillegas observes, “For me, Martín means hope. He’s the kind of person who makes me think things can change for the better.”

Martín Nuñez is a Mexico City-based artist who studied at La Esmeralda under Abraham Cruzvillegas, whom Nuñez has collaborated with on numerous international gallery and museum projects. Nuñez’s work has been exhibited at the Museo Experimental UNAM, Desert Center|Los Angeles, Zona Maco, Spring Break/Art Show, and Frieze LA. Nuñez is also the founder and owner of the skateboarding and lifestyle brand Lúdica.

Michael Slenske is a Los Angeles-based writer, editor and independent curator. He is a contributing writer for Los Angeles magazine, a contributing editor for Galerie, and has served as the editor-at-large of CULTURED and LALA and as a contributing editor at the LA Times's DesignLA, Modern Painters and Art + Auction. He is the founder of the project space Desert Center and the artist pop-up The Street & The Shop. Slenske also curated the L.A. On Fire exhibition at Wilding Cran Gallery last fall and co-organized the Los Angeles edition of Drive-By-Art (Public Art In This Moment of Social Distancing) in May of 2020.