Sergio Miguel

Sergio Miguel builds hybrid worlds where beauty bleeds into the grotesque, drawing energy from colonial legacies and contemporary myth-making. His paintings channel a Baroque sensibility—rich with chiaroscuro, ornate detailing, and a shadowy potency—infused with subversive, erotic strangeness. His imagery emerges from the tensions of colonial-era casta paintings and mythic iconographies—reimagined through modern queer urgency. Figures verge on the animalistic or angelic, poised at the threshold of transformation, challenging rigid identity markers and inviting psychological ambiguity. Miguel’s compositions often feature young men alongside fantastical beasts—Minotaurs, demonic horses, otherworldly hybrids—set within stark, decay-ridden industrial backdrops that amplify the tension between flesh and ruin. Anchored in art-history reference points from Goya and medieval bestiaries to Colonial Mexican portraiture and New Objectivity, his technique blends precise draftsmanship with visceral textures. Blood, bone, flesh—and the wound—carry symbolic as well as tactile weight. Miguel’s practice interrogates the legacies of oppression, sensuality, and transformation. His paintings pulse with formal elegance and uncanny dissonance, crafting a visual language where identity becomes fluid, and myth feels urgently contemporary. ...

Newchild was founded by Diego Castaño, Chandler Noah and Sarah Vanwelden in 2020 in Antwerp, Belgium. Newchild serves as a physical and digital platform for established and emerging artists whose practice is defined by conceptualism, narrative and an ambitious technical approach. Newchild was created to cultivate cross-pollination and meaningful exchange, fostering a collaborative environment for artists to explore beyond their established modes of expression. It curates a regular programme of offbeat exhibitions, participates in art fairs globally and works in close collaboration with foundations and museums. ...