Drawing by Numbers: the intimate systems of José Antonio Suárez Londoño

Galleria Continua's latest exhibition, Drawing by Numbers, marks the third solo presentation by Colombian artist José Antonio Suárez Londoño at its San Gimignano, Italy space, showcasing an expansive yet intensely personal body of work. Comprising 100 drawings and 84 etchings, the art exhibition on display from May 3 – August 31, 2025, presents a nuanced portrait of a visual artist whose practice is grounded in disciplined ritual, open-ended experimentation and the interplay between solitude and collaboration.

At the core of Suárez Londoño's contemporary art is an unwavering commitment to drawing as a daily act, not merely as a medium, but as a way of thinking. His materials are modest and often transient: A4 paper, sketchbooks, business cards, ticket stubs, teabags and pressed flower petals. These fragments become vessels for an elaborate visual language populated by dancers, surreal hybrids, flora, fauna and meditative abstractions.

The exhibition's title, Drawing by Numbers, originates from the multidisciplinary artist's formative childhood experience with a "paint-by-numbers" kit. That early encounter with structured creativity now echoes in a sophisticated, system-driven artistic process. In a distinctive gesture of collaborative authorship, the contemporary artist asked his students to contribute thematic prompts. From over 400 suggestions, one theme was randomly drawn each day throughout 2024, guiding that day's drawing. This act of randomness, as the artist notes—"like going to an oracle or a church in search of divine inspiration"—however, was the collective vision of his students that introduced both serendipity and unpredictability into his otherwise methodical rhythm. The results are a poetic archive of collaboration and constraint.

From the 366 resulting drawings, 100 were selected for the exhibition at Galleria Continua—a process the artist acknowledges as fluid and contingent, highlighting the project's temporal sensitivity and rejection of fixed hierarchies. The exhibition also signals Suárez Londoño's renewed engagement with etching, a medium he has explored since the 1980s. After a period of dormancy, in 2018, the Colombian artist started teaching etching techniques to his Friday portrait group, marking his renewed engagement with the medium.

This evolved into a collective, as the press release describes, known as "Grabadores de Domingo ('Sunday Etchers')", reviving a communal spirit of making akin to the amateur traditions of Sunday painters. The 84 etchings on view are products of this intergenerational dialogue, dense, tactile and meditative, continuing his thematic interests while introducing a sharper technical edge.

Together, the drawings and etchings construct a layered universe where structure meets spontaneity, individual vision meets collective impulse. Suárez Londoño's works are not spectacles but objects attuned to slowness: intimate, coded, requiring patient attention. They embody a belief in art as a daily discipline and spiritual exercise, where meaning is not given, but gently uncovered.

With Drawing by Numbers, Galleria Continua presents a show that foregrounds care, attentiveness and the artist's enduring faith in the power of small gestures repeated over time.