Monica Kim Garza (b. 1988 in New Mexico, US) lives and works in Georgia.

Monica Kim Garza portrays audacious women, living life to the fullest. They lounge, eat, drink, smoke, sunbathe, have sex, and play sports, enjoying mundane activities as they calmly and unabashedly gaze at us. As Kim Garza puts it, everyday moments, memories, and „vibes“ come together in joyful, Epicurean scenes, where the pressures of modern life seem to evaporate. Painted with fast-paced, gestural brushstrokes, the female figures and their surrounding environments blend, heedless of antiquated compositional edicts. The women share distinct bodily and ethical features because they all embody the protagonist; Monica Kim Garza. Comparisons to Paul Gauguin's Tahitian works as well as Frida Kahlo's lush self-examinations are frequent, and while the artist formally addresses legacies of Western oil painting, her carefree body-doubles seem cheekily ignorant of the heavy weight of such historically mediated visualities. The trajectory of escapism is, after all, freedom.

Garza’s work has been exhibited in several solo exhibitions, including Sliver of Salt, Soco Gallery, Charlotte, US (2022); Baguettes, The Hole, New York, US (2021); Summer I Miss You, Ruttkowski;68, Cologne, Germany (2021); Closer, V1 Gallery, Copenhagen, Denmark (2020); Cucul, with Vincent Beaurin, Galerie Julien Cadet, Paris, France (2020); Orange and Cinnamon, New Image Art Gallery, Los Angeles, US (2020); and Laredo, V1 Gallery, Copenhagen, Denmark (2019).

Among her group exhibitions Mixed Pickles, Ruttkowski;68, Cologne, Germany (2021); Paper Cut Bodega III, V1 Gallery, Copenhagen, Denmark (2021); Lampadaphoria, V1 Gallery, Copenhagen, Denmark (2021); Play, The Hole, New York, US (2021); Hybrids, CFHILL, Stockholm, Sweden (2020); Personal Mythologies, Galerie Julien Cadet, Paris, France (2020); Woman, Allouche Benias Gallery, Athens, Greece (2020); The Beyond: Georgia O’Kieffe and Beyond, New Britain Museum of American Art, Connecticut, US (2019); PUNCH LA, Jeffrey Deitch Gallery, Los Angeles, US (2019) and Pack den Badeaunzug ein, Kornfeld Galerie, Berlin, Germany (2019).

Garza received a Bachelor of Fine Arts in painting and drawing from California College of the Arts (2010).

MONICA KIM GARZA