Omar Saenz

BIO

Born in 1989 in Monterrey, Mexico.

Omar Saenz received his bachelor's degree in design from the Universidad Autonoma de Nuevo Leon in 2011. Saenz has had four solo shows in museums and cultural institutions in Mexico and France and has exhibited in spaces such as Material Art Fair and the MARCO Museum. His work was selected for the Nuevo Leon State Art Award, a comprehensive survey of contemporary art from the Mexican state. Since 2009 he has participated in Street Painting festivals in public spaces across Mexico and Europe, winning prizes and distinctions in cities in England, France, Germany, Italy, and Mexico.

In 2019 he did a residency at the Association of Le Port des Créateurs in Toulon, France, where he had his first solo show in Europe, participated in a street painting festival, and conducted workshops for the local community. For the last ten years, he volunteered at Instituto Nuevo Amanecer, an institution in Mexico dedicated to improving the quality of life of children with cerebral palsy and their families, designing activities and assignments, and creating artwork in collaboration with the children. He has also been part of numerous charity auctions at the MARCO Museum.

ARTIST STATEMENT

"Painting and drawing are the tools that allow me to infuse a series of everyday scenes and seemingly quiet and discreet objects with an enigmatic presence in an attempt to make this intimacy of things feel expansive. My work takes the surface as a platform to research ideas on the relationship between abstraction and figuration, colour and scale, the poetic and the mundane, or the hidden and the visible. Whether in the open mouth of a grocery bag or behind heavy drapes and torn papers, the images remaining on a veiled plane intermediate between these relationships are an invitation to an inner world. They record the passage from one space to another and the veil that divides them."