ARTIST BIO
Pablo Garcia-Lopez is an inmigrant artist from Spain. He holds a Bachelor's degree in Biochemistry from the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid and a PhD in Neuroscience from the Universidad Complutense de Madrid. As a neuroscientist, he has published numerous papers in international scientific journals and is an expert on the legacy of Spanish artist, scientist, and Nobel laureate Santiago Ramón y Cajal (1852–1934). In addition to his scientific career, Dr. Garcia-Lopez has an MFA in Sculpture from the Rinehart School of Sculpture at the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) in Baltimore.
His artistic practice often bridges the gap between science and art, incorporating neuroscientific concepts into sculptural forms. He has been an artist-in-residence at several prestigious programs, including Brooklyn Art Space (2012), Franconia Sculpture Park with support from the Jerome Foundation (Minnesota, 2013), Sculpture Space (Ithaca, 2017), Governors Island Artist-in-Residence Program (2019), and Mccoll Arts Center (2023) and received a Queens Council on the Arts Grant (2020).
Garcia-Lopez has participated in exhibitions across the globe, including in Madrid (Spain), Dresden (Germany), Brno (Czech Republic), London (UK), New York, Washington, and Baltimore (USA), and Sydney (Australia). His artwork is in private collections in USA, Spain and Germany. He currently teaches interdisciplinary courses on science, science fiction, art, and culture at the School of Visual Arts in New York City and in 2025 he was awarded with the Elizabeth Foundation studio membership.
ARTIST STATEMENT
Pablo Garcia's work is rich and layered with symbolism, blending the realms of science, art, and human experience in a very tactile way. The use of natural silk as his primary material not only ties back to Ramon y Cajal’s poetic description of neurons as "butterflies of the soul" but also creates a delicate, almost ethereal connection between the biological, the emotional, and the material world. Pablo has created a process of silk casting that he uses to cast small figurines (angels, saints, hyenas, wolves, lizards, etc) and ornamental motifs that contain neurological elements (brain, nerves, thalamus, hippocampus, etc.). He mixes these cast elements with braids, helixes, knots art, macramé art and even he uses an iron-hair to create different textures. These motifs are arranged creating complex baroque compositions that have connections with Fiber arts, Victorian funerary art and Hair dressing
His last series, "Neurowarfare" deals kind with the militarization of neuroscience, the ethical implications of weaponizing the mind, and perhaps the larger societal impacts of that collaboration.