Puerto Vallarta, Mexico - While you are out enjoying this week's South Side Shuffle, be sure to stop by Galería Contempo, where you can experience the work of prestigious Mexican Artist Irma Grizá's "Altamar," during her opening reception on Friday, February 7th from 6-10 pm.

Featuring the ocean - or waves and underwater scenes - the paintings of Irma Grizá share a force that not only lies in the themes she develops, but in the vision they offer us as well. Paintings made to endure, to live with, to widen and illuminate our existence, making every day as splendid as them.

Her seascapes reveal the borderline coexistence regarding different zones of emotion. These are palpable works about the emotive alternation that we all live. In its patchwork, that is a work whose harmony is composed by diverse parts or patches, the seascapes constitute a profound artistic continuity of what is apparently discontinuous, a composition of initially isolated forces. Thus, these unfolded landscapes are naturally suited to create diptychs and triptychs.

Irma Grizá is faithful to the visual powers that she convokes. And those of us who see her canvases are the spectators of her act, the guests invited to witness (in the scene of the seascapes) the proof that our gaze can see more than what meets the eye; thanks to the artist who reveals it to us.

Grizá was born in Mexico City, where she studied painting and etching at the National School of Fine Arts (Academia de San Carlos) at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Mexico (UNAM.) She has more than 50 years of experience as a fine artist, and her work has been exhibited in a vast number of solo exhibits, as well as in many group shows, in galleries and museums in Mexico, France and the United States.

In 1991 she won the prestigious Paris Award, presented by Grupo de los Dieciseis, A.C., which exhibited her work in Paris, France. Grizá's work has been reviewed by many prominent Mexican writers and art critics, including Raquel Tibol, Luis Ignacio Sáinz, Miguel Ángel Echegaray, Alberto Ruy Sánchez, Hugo Hiriart, Eliseo Alberto, Francisco Serrano & Alfonso Alfaro, among others.

Her paintings that say yes to life and that proposes, in the clear, sharp language of color and form, that being human is a responsibility and compromise, and that the fact of being alive is much more astonishing and much more simple too, than what the horror of the present times leads us to believe.

Galería Contempo is proud to cordially invite you to meet Irma Grizá at the Opening Reception for her "Altamar" exhibition on Friday the 7th of February from 6 pm to 10 pm. This airy two-story Gallery is located at Basilio Badillo 252, on the South Side of Vallarta.