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Reparación
JHONATAN PULIDO

4 April – 17 May 2025
Alma Pearl, Unit T, Reliance Wharf, London



Press
gowithyamo, August 2025
Spotlight: Jhonatan Pulido’s ‘Reparación’
Interview by Alfie Portman

Publication

Alma Pearl Issue 1
Publisher: Alma Pearl, London, 2025
Text: Tom Morton
21 x 15 cm, 6 pages + cover
Softcover with accompanying outer sleeve 
Printed in an edition of 200 copies In Pulido’s work, desire — for repair, for amelioration, for expiation — is caught in the surface of his paint, which it cannot penetrate. There, it must find satisfaction, or rather a complex set of compensatory pleasures, to do with looking, thinking and feeling. This is the precious thing art offers us. We should not turn it down.

– Tom Morton



Alma Pearl is pleased to present Reparación, Jhonatan Pulido’s second solo exhibition with the gallery. The presentation includes new paintings as well as a site-specific intervention. Building on the themes explored in his previous work, Pulido here addresses notions of healing, restoration, and remembrance in relation to conflict and wartime violence.
 
Reparación, also the title of one of the works in the exhibition, translates as "repair" or "reparation." Stitched together into separate sections of canvas, this piece is Pulido's largest painting to date. The artist here reimagines the rural vernacular architecture of his native Colombia, incorporating the style of DIY advertisements commonly found on local walls. The stitching evokes a tradition of gendered labour and carries powerful metaphorical implications. In the large painting Sobandero, which translates as “healer” and often associated with ancestral knowledge, Pulido lists ailments that can be cured—ranging from broken bones to flu-like symptoms. Similarly, diamond-shaped symbols, a prominent motif in Pulido’s work, were traditionally painted to invoke rain, good fortune, and bountiful harvests, echoing indigenous and shamanistic beliefs. These symbols continue to be painted on houses today, just as their ancestors once painted them on rock faces.



Pulido’s site-specific intervention mirrors the walls of his native region, becoming a metaphor for a space, which is both political and deeply personal and reflects the complex weave of human existence. Layers of paint are applied to conceal childhood memories of tags and graffiti here re-worked through acts of sanding and scraping. Jhonatan Pulido’s painting practice is centred on expressive mark making that draws on an explosive colour palette. He works through a continual application of material that produces bold fields of colour and form that interact and overlap to explore the vibrancy of painting today alongside the evocation of memory and reparation of trauma lodged in the past.

The exhibition is accompanied by a text written by writer and curator Tom Morton. Download the full text here.