Colombian-born artist José Antonio Suárez Londoño, or JASL as he refers to himself, follows a highly structured studio practice of reading and drawing daily. His dedication to drawing is seen through his experimental mark-marking and acute attention to detail. The artist uses the intimate space of a notebook, creating surrealist scenes that offer a look into the artist’s internal world. JASL’s delicate renderings of animals, botanicals, surrealist figures, stains, text, buildings, dancers, and hypnotizing geometries pull the viewer into a narrative of their own making. 

He continues this daily practice today, pulling inspiration from reading and responding to such disparate literary sources as Ovid, Rimbaud, Patti Smith, and Sam Shepard as a way to prompt a drawing. Fragments of text in Spanish, English, and French are sometimes incorporated in to the drawings as well, deliberately floating in reverse in the printed imagery. The interior world of his imagination reveals itself in intertwined figures, animals, maps, botanicals, and mechanical forms. Most recently at Tamarind, JASL created a series of intimate drawings on stone, each one like a notebook page from another century.

JASL’s works are found in collections at the Banco de la República, Colombia; the Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna, Austria; the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York, USA and in numerous private collections. His work has been included in the 55th Venice Biennial as well as the 24th and 32nd San Paolo Biennial in Brazil.