Written by Scott Watson
For Moncho abstract painting opens doors to psychic realms and cosmological horizons. Painting is both an exploration of his own interior being and of an outward bound journey into realms of consciousness we might all share. When I look at them I am reminded of Aztec codices and abstraction influenced by Theosophy, among other things. This gives me a way into the paintings, but it is only one way among many.
The recent works are in two series. ABC are geometric and XYZ are more painterly. They reflect and refract each other. The geometry in the ABC paintings is organic. In them, forms gestate, are born and grow. There is a resonance with old codex paintings of Chicomoztoc, the seven caves of origin in Aztec mythology. In images where flesh and geology become one, the caves give birth to all peoples. I see this in a painting like Untitled ABC #4, where the geometric constructions swell and reproduce themselves against a red background, evoking the lining of interior cavities that are both fleshly and of earth.
The crystallographic resonances of the ABC paintings also remind me of the thought of German romantic poet/philosopher and mining engineer, Novalis who proposed that the earth’s interior was a site of continuous spiritual transformation. For Novalis, so called inorganic nature was alive, sentient but sleeping, “sparkling ever-tranquil stones” waiting for artists to reawaken them. Moncho’s paintings perform that awakening task. They explode with color in an exuberance that celebrates the life of minerals and stones. While the forms seem to generate and grow, the compositions also resemble slices of polished agate or geode, almost as signs that the painter has penetrated the secrets of mineral autogenesis through a kind of dissection. These paintings are a correspondence between our interior and the Earth’s.
The XYZ series are more loosely painted and have a different structure. They seem a bit like palimpsests; fragments of landscapes, forests, bits of weather and manuscripts. If growth in the ABC series is slow, here there is more commotion, things are liquid and atmospheric.
From the beginnings of abstraction artists have been interested, not only in the non-objective, but in making things that are usually invisible visible. A thread of Abstraction that includes Kandinsky Hilma Af Klint and Lawren Harris was deeply influenced by the work of the Theosophist Annie Bessant who wrote a book on “Thought Forms”. Bessant believed that thoughts took form in “mental matter” where they could exist independent of the thinker. She had her book illustrated and as one might expect, jagged lines and sinuous curves had emotional as well as “thought” importance. Colors too were tied to specific emotions. But the artists I’ve mentioned, three among many, seemed to have done their own exploring of an astral psychic realm, making paintings that were portals into another spiritual realm, rather than following a pre-established code. For the world revealed in paintings like these is very fluid, nothing is fixed, especially not meaning.
In Untitled XYZ #3, one can see a sort of mirror of some of the motifs in the ABC series. A band of yellow could be teeth or the furrows of some interior cave made of flesh. There are serpents and birds amidst the bursts of color. It all points to a theme of things coming into being, into form and quickly transforming.
Moncho’s painting is generous, his gestures are open, not cramped. He welcomes the viewer into the worlds he has disclosed through paint. Beautiful and otherworldly, they register a pulse of energy that we apprehend as real, so sure and convincing is the painting. Of course, it may very well be that this other, astral world is a world that is not just made visible by painting, but is in fact, created by it.
Scott Watson was Director/Curator of the Morris and Belkin Art Gallery at the University of British Columbia from 1989 to 2022.
Opening reception: May 23, 2026. Gallery Sonder, 3435 East Coast Hwy, Corona Del Mar, CA 92625