Bio — Blackblood Studio

Andreas Hijar (/e:har/; born January 9, 1982 is a Mexican artist and illustrator known as “· Golgo ·” living behind a mask and through his art. A self-taught artist, Golgo is a collector of imagery who has developed a singular style. His influences: a mixture of classical art, comic books, and futurism. His work explores fantasies of realities not yet lived.

Golgo has a strong connection to his roots, beginning with his admiration for Lucha Libre, which also inspired the mask that veils his identity as homage to the greatest hero of his childhood and to protect anonymity. Through graffiti and Street Art, he explored the convolution of life, limits of glorification, the obscure and the divine. Christ and weeping saints appear together with human bodies, sci-fi and classical Mexican tropes. These eclectic cultural references focus on existence, beliefs, and the functioning and decay of the human body.

One of the young artists who dominated the Mexican art scene in the early 2000´s, Hijar first started painting illegaly on Mexico City´s streets in the mid 1990´s. His street art oscillated between the sacred and the profane, the real and the imagined, the colonial and the indigenous. He then established the collective Da-Flow Team Heavyweight Industries with his fellow street artists and luchadores. United by the common belief in the power of the visual, the members of DFTHWI* have sought to integrate their vibrant designs into the mainstream culture. With this aim in mind, they have worked on commission for organizations, artists and brands including Nike, BlvckScvle, Reebok, Pleasures, Adidas, Halfwaydead, Bruce Lee Foundation, Slayer, Ssur, Misfits, Kinnikuman, Maroon 5, Picasso Foundation, The Band Ghost, Vans, Gorillaz, New Era, among others. The DFTHWI collective currently is comprised by Golgo and Lil Mister P, Golgo´s right hand man. Both members hide their faces under luchador-inspired masks.

Golgo also continues to produce as an individual creator at his Black Blood Studio, originally founded in Mexico City in 1666 and now located in Los Angeles. Golgo employs a wide range of techniques including ink and aerosols, but his main technique is oil painting where he exploits a hyperrealist style and medieval European imagery, playing with the notions of spirituality, corporeality and pain. They also expose the futility of any attempts to draw a line between art and science, as they demonstrate that these areas of knowledge complement rather than conflict each other. Currently traveling nomadically around the world and in Black Blood Studio, he surrounds himself in his workspaces with specific symbols, colors and objects that transmute into his paintings, graphics and alternate design work. His work always expresses a hint of the metaphysical, hope, amazement; creations based around characters and themes that surface from distress into a limbo, seemingly catching the tragic beauty of a last breath.