Santiago Merino

CC Jasper presents Systems of Gesture, Santiago Merino’s first solo exhibition in New York City. Merino builds paintings through repeated impressions, allowing individual movements to establish the terms of a larger composition. His investigation of gesture and reproduction spans over two decades.

Textures resemble the interference of a CRT screen. Seen through a camera, the repetitions produce a moiré effect, making a still painting appear unsettled. The resemblance to a transmitted image has a physical basis in the work. Merino’s self-fabricated tools are one part of the overall process. Each action holds relatability to a manufactured “image machine”

In “The capacity to consider an act as a model”, red impressions bend into broad, ribbed curves. Smaller dots gather along their edges, while vertical trails extend through the composition. The repeated units remain visible even where they collect into a larger sweep. The title offers a way into the process. An act can become a model for the next act, setting a sequence in motion without determining every result. Here, gestural automation describes a rhythm sustained by the artist’s movements.

Pattern and repetition mimic a form of automation. Textures and imagery make it difficult to separate one application from the next. Repetition becomes a means of obscuring as well as recording. Merino’s automation directly reflects each action within his process, but the final image does not necessarily reflect the gesture of painting.

Across Systems of Gesture, accumulated actions never settle into a static image. Action resembles rhythms of an assembly line, but never renders to that logic. What should operate as a system continues to reveal the body performing it.

Santiago Merino (b. 1973, Mexico City) works across painting, installation, and interventions in architectural space. His investigation of repeated gesture began with Alfabeto de Gestos in 1995 and his first solo exhibition, Creación Accidental, in 1997. Since 2009, he has developed a repertoire of adapted rollers and analog tools that produce recurring impressions, connecting the physical processes of painting with the visual structures of film, photography, and electronic screens.

Solo exhibitions include El Oficio/Arrostrar at Museo Cabañas, Guadalajara; Colaboraciones Forzadas at Museo Universitario del Chopo, Mexico City; Monolitos para Nebulosas at Casa del Lago, Mexico City; and Réplicas at Saenger Galería, Mexico City. He has participated in group exhibitions at Museo Jumex, Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil, and the San Diego Museum of Art, where he presented a collaboration with Iñaki Bonillas in Axis Mexico. His work was also included in 30 años en el Mundo del Arte, una Revisión de la Bienal FEMSA, presented in Guanajuato and Monterrey in 2024 and 2025.

Merino received the Mexico City distinction at the XII Bienal FEMSA, and his work is held in the FEMSA and ESPAC collections. He was a founding member of Salón ACME’s curatorial council, serving from 2012 to 2023.