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Ínsito adj. Peculiar and inherent to a thing as if born of it.

'Ínsito' is Bernardo Montoya's first individual show in the United States, and his first at Alejandra von Hartz Gallery. The exhibition consists of a group of works, sculptures and installation that have their origins in painting.

Although Montoya first came to art as a straightforward painter, he increasingly considers the medium an expanded field. He is after a painting that has escaped the frame. It no longer depends on any support or constraint; it depends only on itself. In its purest materiality, it reveals each of the layers that are superimposed through the process of production until the painting-painting is formed, exposing in its path, decisions, mistakes, and accidents, posing the ... question of the dialectic between the spontaneous and the

natural. 'My painting is becoming less and less painting,' he proposes. 'My practice is informed by that place where art is understood as thought.'

Born in 1979 in Bogota, Colombia, Bernardo Montoya has exhibited his works both collectively and individually in Colombia and Spain. He graduated from the Universidad de los Andes, Bogota with a degree in the History and Theory of Modern and Contemporary Art (2008), and as a Master of Fine Arts (2005). From 2002 to 2004, he studied Fine Arts at the Universidad Complutense, Madrid, Spain; and has worked as an Assistant Professor - Young researcher, at the School of Political Science and Government, University of Rosario, Bogotá, Colombia.

His work has been reviewed among others by Arte al Dia Internacional, Art Nexus, and in local media in Colombia and Spain. Amongst his most recent exhibitions are 'Derivación' Sala de Proyectos Galería Nueveochenta, Bogotá, 2012; 'Pintura-Pintura', Sala de Proyectos Departamento Arte Universidad de los Andes, Bogotá, 2012. Future exhibitions: VI Salón Bidimensional de Arte de la Fundación Gilberto Alzate Avendaño; group show at the Museo de Arte Moderno de Bogotá, and the development of a project to intervene public spaces in the city of Bogota.

Bernardo Montoya lives and works in Bogota, Colombia