2001
BFA San Francisco Art Institute
Lives and works in San Francisco and Mexico

The central preoccupation of David Gremard Romero’s work is “embedding contemporary iconography and themes in a classical figurative craft, seeking to tease out the hidden relationships and continuities between classical art and current culture.”

Gremard Romero’s Metamorphosis, 2006 - an homage to the ancient Roman poet Ovid’s epic poem with the same title – narrates the classical mythologies such as stories of Syrinx and Pan, Orpheus and Eurydice, Argus, Pygmalion and Actaeon. However, Gremard Romero depicts these mythological personas together with superheroes and esoteric figures of our time, such as the DC Comics’ Wonderwoman, Mexican pro wrestler Mil Máscaras and the magician Houdini: through his depiction alongside these characters, the artist himself is transformed into once of them. Like a frieze structure in ancient Greek temples, Gremard Romero’s work encapsulates the artist’s struggle to confront the complicated issues of identity such as race, gender and sexuality.

In his more recent works, the artist explores themes from the colonial era of the New World with various media such as ceramic and textile. For example, his Luchador (Mexican free-fight wrestler) costumes, hand-embroidered by the Zapotec Indians of Southern Mexico, represent the socio cultural narratives of pre-Colombian culture and its ongoing influence on contemporary societies in Central America.

Gremard Romero has exhibited extensively in California region, including the San Francisco; 22nd Annual Berkeley Art Center National Juried Exhibition in 2005.