Guillermo Galindo: full Tortoise Catalogue by qualiacontemporaryart

GUILLERMO GALINDO

On view January 14 – February 28, 2026

ABOUT TORTOISE GUILLERMO GALINDO

Qualia Contemporary Art is pleased to present Tortoise, a solo exhibition of new work by MexicanAmerican composer, visual artist, and experimental musician Guillermo Galindo. The exhibition continues Galindo’s exploration of borders – metaphysical, geographic, political, philosophical, ecological, and beyond. His broad conceptual focus employs an expansive interpretation of what constitutes a border, whether it be a liminal realm between dreams and consciousness or the differentiation of sound and vision. Tortoise will feature a series of paintings of tortoise shells collected by the artist during his yearlong residency at Roswell, New Mexico, and a selection of double exposure photographic prints with graphic interventions.

Tortoise is anchored by Galindo’s investigation of tortoises as symbols of migration, intuition, longevity, and wisdom, contextualized by his longstanding interest in border constructs. Fascinated by the tortoise’s unique capacity to navigate between land and water and to reorient to its birthplace, Galindo views the tortoise as a type of universal clock through which events are eternally synchronized. Tortoises exemplify Carl Jung’s theory of transcendent function, in which the psyche is able to reconcile forces of opposition between the unconscious and conscious realms. The confluence of physical memory, as in the tortoise’s ability to use the Earth’s magnetic field as a geolocator, and temporal memory, as in the natural grooved patterns of the tortoise’s lower shell (the “plastron”), can be felt in Galindo’s paintings of tortoise shells. Both Galindo’s paintings and the double-exposure photographs refer to the two tortoise shells that he found in the desert of New Mexico as a Roswell-artist-in-residence.

Galindo’s work references the tortoise’s many meanings as a recurring archetype across cultures and time periods. For example, Galindo was inspired by the Shang Dynasty-era practice of “plastromancy,” a form of divination using turtle shells that was practiced in ancient China. In the “scutes” – the individual growth plates on the plastron that can be used to calculate the tortoise’s age, similar to a tree ring – Galindo has interpreted and decoded a portrait of the sentient entity within the shell, giving it visibility in his paintings. The natural seams and patterns of the shell are akin to the symbols of music notation in Galindo’s practice: signifiers of meaning within systems of visual iconography.

Constellation Vessel, 2025

Acrylic on canvas

45 x 120 in

My Secret Garden, 2025

Acrylic on canvas

45 x 120 in

Pinball Enigma, 2025

Acrylic on canvas

86 x 36 in

Rabbit Hole, 2025

Acrylic on canvas

88 x 36 in

Radiant Helpers, 2025

Print: graphic intervention over double exposure photography (Edition 1/1) 24 x 32 in

5200 USD

Listening through Veils, 2025

Print: graphic intervention over double exposure photography (Edition 1/1)

24 x 32 in

5200 USD

Prescient Vision Keeper, 2025

Print (Edition 1/1)

24 x 32 in

5200 USD

Print: graphic intervention over double exposure photography (Edition 1/1) 24 x 32 in

5200 USC

Echoes of Elysium, 2025

Threshold Light, 2025

Acrylic on canvas

12 x 12 in Price

Between Worlds Glow, 2025

8 x 8 in

Price on request

Acrylic on canvas

Pensive Shapeshifter, 2025

Acrylic on canvas

12 x 12 in

Price on request

Mirror Realms (diptych), 2025

Acrylic on canvas

12 x 12 in (each piece)