Volume Gallery is thrilled to announce Porfirio Gutiérrez: Modernism, an exhibition of captivating new abstractions exploring linear motifs, opening September 12, 2025, from 5 to 8 p.m. Expanding on the renowned imagery of Gutiérrez’s Zapotec heritage, these highly intentional weavings feature color palettes achieved with natural dyes, honoring the artistic vision of the artist’s ancestors while adding layers of contemporary interpretation.
Guided by tradition but informed by contemporary life and experience, Porfirio Gutiérrez’s practice is a powerful affirmation of cultural continuity, personal identity, and artistic innovation. His work bridges generations, reimagining ancestral Zapotec knowledge through a deeply personal and material-driven lens. By honoring the symbolism, technique, and spirituality embedded in Indigenous weaving and natural dyeing, Gutiérrez not only preserves a vital cultural legacy but also asserts its ongoing relevance in today’s world. His weavings are both of the land and expansive in vision—offering a resonant dialogue between past and present, earth and spirit, tradition and transformation. He engages the core principles of Modernism—experimentation with form, abstraction, and an emphasis on materials and process—as a continuation, reinvigorating the very Indigenous imagery that Modernists once borrowed. Through his practice, he asserts the original context and authorship of this visual language, while advancing its relevance within contemporary discourse.
His geometric Continuous Line compositions are woven to appear as if drawn in a single, unbroken line, evoking the meandering path of life and a meditative precision. Embracing the beauty of simplicity, these works reflect the rhythms of contemporary life and the cadence of the weaving process itself. The use of line and restrained abstraction speaks to a long history of cultural influence, as the visual language of the Zapotec people has inspired artists all over the world. Through form and material—the texture of wool, the tones of the natural dyes, and the elegance of the continuous line—Gutiérrez creates new compositions with timeless symbolism.
The artist’s Monte Albán works are derived from aerial and elevation views of the iconic steps of sacred Zapotec architecture. With concentric lines and stepped motifs, Gutiérrez improvises with the sacred symbolism embedded in his ancestors’ designs. The monumental civic and ceremonial structure Monte Albán in Oaxaca, Mexico, was built in alignment with the sun, moon, and cardinal directions. Gutiérrez is engaging with not only the geometry of the ancient structure, but also the play of light and shadow across stepped forms and the shifting perspective brought by time, season, and celestial movement. The step motifs and sunbaked colors evoke the structure’s spiritual resonance—cycles of life, cosmic balance, and the ongoing dialogue between man, earth, and sky.
The presence of braids in Gutiérrez’s work is representative of the deep cultural and spiritual significance plaiting holds in Zapotec culture as ceremonial adornment as well as the artist’s feminine side. The piece is a gesture of healing and emotional connection—an exploration of the strength required to be in touch with one’s emotions.
Gutiérrez gathers natural dye materials between his native Oaxaca and his current home in Ventura, California. His process draws from thousands of years of ancestral knowledge and an evolving understanding of chemistry and botany. He is able to produce over 200 distinct hues from a variety of materials: pericón produces golden yellows; marush, greens; huizache, deep blacks; añil, vibrant blues; and cochineal insects make intense reds. His practice requires a sensitivity to nature’s rhythms—harvesting must happen at particular times, and factors like drought or sun exposure can determine the final color. This practice is more than technical; it is spiritual. In transforming earth into color, the artist honors the divinity of nature, recognizing that plants, like people, are living beings. Through this process, he sees himself not as separate from the land but as an extension of it—engaged in an act of reverence, reciprocity, and transformation.
Porfirio Gutiérrez: Modernism will be on view through November 1, 2025.
Porfirio Gutiérrez (b. 1978) is a California-based Zapotec artist and activist whose deliberately patterned textile works are informed by a marriage of his cultural heritage and an exploration of Modernist principles. Embracing the traditions of the Cloud People, or Zapotecs, who have lived in the Oaxaca Valley of Mexico for over two centuries, the artist works with material sourced directly from the earth, informed by his childhood learning weaving and dyeing techniques from his parents. Gutiérrez’s palette is determined by the varied flora which populates his homeland. Acutely aware of nature’s constant flux, Gutiérrez makes record of the exact period a plant is harvested for dyes, which he calls its “seasonal imprint,” noting that the color gleaned from a specific plant or insect will vary in vibrancy as the effects of climate change continue to be felt.
In 2023, the artist’s work was the subject of a solo exhibition, Continuous Line/Cosmos, at Chinati Foundation, Marfa, TX. Gutiérrez’s work has also been included in numerous significant group exhibitions in recent years, including We Live in Painting: The Nature of Color in Mesoamerican Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA in 2024; Sangre de Nopal, Fowler Museum at UCLA, Los Angeles, CA in 2024; Temporary Spaces, Mingei International Museum, San Diego, CA in 2024; Weaving at Black Mountain College, Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center, Asheville, NC in 2023; and Origins, Sharjah Institute, UAE in 2023, among others. Gutiérrez’s work has been acquired by a number of public collections, including the The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL; Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA; and The National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., among others.
