In the beginning it was shape, then came light, afterwards color and finally texture; as in the architectonic creation, the genesis of Juan Medina’s pictorial work rests on a solid structure of techniques and concepts that weave in plastic dimensions his memories made of oil and canvas.

With time, the step from watercolor to oil was the resource that allowed him to approach with mastery the conscience of time encrusted in stone, wood, mirrors and all model –object that transfers Renaissance rhetoric without moralizing it.

Every one of Juan Medina’s paintings where “another” reflected universe emerges must be seen from this point of view: either the reflex is symmetric to another reality or it projects us, like the Mannerists, into a decomposition of space; hence to another figurative reality, that of memories, of which only he will hold the key.

His work expresses the desire of a new understanding of the everyday object, like a scientific approach to a latent reality. During more than 23 years he has painted progressively incorporating techniques and materials that have built a three-dimensional structure of virtual space.

The optic field in his recent works is not a mere assembly of trompe l’œil effects, it is the pragmatic synthesis of a hyperrealist-surrealist art that is in Mexico beginning to get rid of its atavism to folklore. In this sense, he is a part of the solid vanguard of Latin American artists that have been widely recognized abroad and that set the bases of Contemporary Art in Mexico.


Jorge Sánchez Becerril
Professor of Art History, National University of Mexico
Ph.D Architecture in Paris