Incomplete Trajectories: Ernesto García Sánchez & Roger Toledo

Thomas Nickles Project is pleased to announce Incomplete Trajectories, an exhibition of new work by Ernesto García Sánchez and Roger Toledo, on view from March 27 until May 11, 2025. Both artists push the boundaries of traditional painting by breaking down and reassembling its core elements to create fresh perspectives on form, color, and meaning. Moving beyond narrative representation, they experiment with structure and composition to rethink expectations of how we see and understand art. 

García Sánchez deconstructs the form of painting by isolating its essential elements – color, line, shape, form, texture, space – only to reconstruct them in new and unexpected formats. His practice is rooted in daily observation and experimentation rather than adhering to rigid narratives. “I dedicate my life to doing and not to narrating,” he states, describing his obsession with synthesis and the creation of a “filtered reality” where only shapes exist, devoid of identity or conflict. This minimalist abstraction extends to the manipulation of materials, with some works incorporating hinges to allow movement, while others juxtapose contrasting colors and textures to subvert conventional pictorial space. By reframing painting as a dynamic system of shifting relations rather than a fixed image, García Sánchez questions the constraints of the medium, embracing geometry and fractals to drive a continuous process of discovery.

Toledo, on the other hand, engages the cube as both a structure and a conceptual framework, exploring its permutations as an “incomplete structure.” His investigation began in 2008 while studying at Instituto Superior de Arte (ISA) with his Homage to LeWitt series, which, under critique, prompted questioning about the necessity to revisit a form that Sol LeWitt had already “exploited to the point of exhaustion.” This led Toledo to interrogate notions of artistic freedom and constraint, pushing him to redefine the cube as a space of both limitation and possibility. Carrying this framework into his next body of work, Toledo approached landscape painting as a systemic study of color, using the cube to meticulously isolate hues to reconceive the natural world. Over time, this exploration became increasingly granular, culminating in the pixel as the fundamental building block of color. For Toledo, the pixel becomes a site of continuous experimentation, where each iteration remains intentionally unresolved yet moving toward new possibilities. Through various mediums, Toledo’s evolving practice continues to navigate the tension between form and flux, challenging existing notions of completeness.

Together, García Sánchez and Toledo engage in an intellectual exercise that challenges not only the parameters of visual representation, but also the constructed realities we take for granted. By investigating the formal components of visual art, their works suggest that just as artistic elements can be rearranged, so too can the systems and norms that shape our world.  

Incomplete Trajectories invites viewers to embrace uncertainty and the potential for change. Through relentless experimentation, García Sánchez and Toledo remind us that perception is fluid, making space to push boundaries until they become new realities.