Guillermo Flores Pacheco – solo Exhibition
Guillermo Flores Pacheco
Beyond the Orb
Opening: October 14th, 2025, 6:00 PM
Retroavangarda Gallery
Jerozolimskie Business Park
Curator: Dr. Anna Kłos
From October 14 until the end of December 2025, the Retroavangarda Gallery in Warsaw will present a solo exhibition by Mexican artist Guillermo Flores Pacheco, titled Beyond the Orb. The exhibition is organized in cooperation with the Embassy of Mexico in Poland as part of the third edition of the Latin American Art Exhibition.
Guillermo Flores Pacheco is a Mexican artist specializing in illustration and digital collage. As an acclaimed graphic designer, he has collaborated with some of the world’s leading brands, working as a creative and art director. His projects include visual identity, advertising illustration, and editorial design.
His portfolio features work for companies and institutions such as Adobe, Apple, Burning Man, Cirque du Soleil, Citi Private Bank, JW Marriott, Marc Jacobs, Nike, Patron Tequila, Sephora, Televisa Univision, Universal Music, Wired Magazine, and Xfinity. The artist has received numerous awards and distinctions, including recognition from SPD, 3×3 Magazine, Comm Arts, CQ Journal, CASE Circle of Excellence Awards, LAD Awards, American Illustration, and Lürzer’s Archive. Commissioned by Adobe, he also designed the splash screen artwork for Photoshop 2025.
His works have been presented in international exhibitions in Poland, London, Japan, Australia, the United States, Argentina, Colombia, and Mexico. In Poland, he has participated in two editions of the International Collage Exhibition as well as in Surreallovers, organized by Retroavangarda.
Beyond the Orb is the artist’s first solo exhibition in Europe. The title symbolizes a journey beyond the limits of the visible world—into layers, contrasts, and symbols that form a fascinating, multidimensional visual language. Each work serves as a gateway to another universe—both intimate and universal.
Guillermo Flores – Interview
On the occasion of the exhibition opening and the artist’s visit to Warsaw, we present a short interview:
1. When did you start working with illustration and graphic design?
I have been working in the creative industry for just over 20 years. I studied graphic design at university, but I specialized in web design and animation, taking classes with the great Rigo Mora, who was a pioneer of animation and stop motion in Mexico alongside the great film director Guillermo del Toro. My first projects were actually designing graphic interfaces for websites, which allowed me to pay a lot of attention to detail.
2. What inspires you the most? Which artists inspire you?
Nature definitely has a special place in my heart; there are so many elements there that I find fascinating! However, what perhaps inspires me most is telling stories; when there is a message behind them, the result can be very powerful. I find inspiration in classical artists such as El Greco, Diego Velázquez, and Dalí. I find Baroque, Surrealism, Maximalism, and Magical Realism fascinating. I also admire and draw a lot of inspiration from Hipgnosis and Stanley Donwood. I’m a huge fan of the great visual artist James Jean.
3. Do you have sources of inspiration outside the visual arts?
I find a great source of inspiration in my cultural background, which is very rich and full of contrasts. Music is a great source of inspiration. Mexican music, such as mariachi, is truly amazing, full of nostalgia, joy, and emotion. However, electronic music is my favorite. Moderat, Sascha Ring, Jon Hopkins, and Radiohead are some of my favorite bands. I greatly admire the German zoologist and naturalist Ernst Haeckel. I am very inspired by the work of Mario Benedetti and Charles Bukowski, and I am also a big fan of the great film director Guillermo del Toro.
4. Your works stand out for their beautiful, vibrant colors and exotic elements of nature, such as plants, animals, and butterflies. What is your relationship with the native Mexican nature? Do you enjoy traveling and being in direct contact with nature?
That goes back to my childhood. We had lots of encyclopedias and illustrated books at home, and my parents also had a large collection of vinyl records with very striking images on the covers. Most of the images I saw on a daily basis were about nature. My favorite book was ‘The Birds of America’ by naturalist and painter John James Audubon. I often find myself traveling and take the opportunity to visit and explore cities, especially to observe their nature. Whenever I can, I go out into nature and really enjoy sitting and observing everything around me.
5. You participated in two editions of the International Collage Exhibition organized by Retroavangarda, as well as in the Surreallovers exhibition. Your illustration was featured on the main poster promoting the International Collage Exhibition. What impact did your collaboration with Retroavangarda have on your later spectacular successes?
I mainly do advertising illustration, which is usually limited to a project or a brief, however, I have always loved the idea of creating my own images, so being invited to participate in exhibitions is something great. I had the privilege of participating on a few occasions with the Retroavangarda gallery, and the result was wonderful. Being the image that promoted the festival gave me a lot of confidence and opened many doors in my career as an illustrator, encouraging me to continue creating. I am very grateful for that.
6. What impact did your success with Adobe (the Photoshop 2025 splash screen project) have on your career?
Interestingly, the reference Adobe showed me when inviting me to create the illustration for the Photoshop splash screen was an image I had created months earlier while exploring new ideas. I had in mind the idea of creating something that was very vibrant and colorful. I had created those illustrations for myself, and perhaps to exhibit them in a gallery in the future. However, it caught their attention, and the result was spectacular. Collaborating with one of the most important brands in the world definitely gave me great international exposure, opening many doors in my career as a graphic artist.
7. In your current solo exhibition at the Retroavangarda Gallery in Warsaw, you are presenting nearly 50 works from different periods. If you had to choose one favorite and briefly describe it, which one would it be?
Each of the images in the exhibition has been important to me as they represent a very particular period of my life. As well as seeing an evolution, I think it’s a great opportunity to pause for a moment and look back at much of what I’ve done over the years, so I’m very grateful for this opportunity.
They are all special, but if I had to choose one, it would be the one with the heart and the umbrella. When I created that image, it was a moment when I realized that even though my heart was broken, I didn’t have to repair it so that no one would notice it was imperfect and perhaps no one would ever love me again. It was time to embrace it, love it, and take care of it, and in the end, it would blossom, even if it was imperfect. At that time, I had read about Kintsugi, a Japanese technique for repairing a piece where they did not hide the breaks, but rather celebrated and enhanced them by joining the pieces with gold dust, making the piece unique and special, resulting in a new piece, often considered more valuable and beautiful than the original, which tells the story of its restoration and resilience.
8. That’s truly a beautiful story.
What does the title of the exhibition Beyond the Orb mean?
Beyond the Orb proposes a journey beyond the visible, a voyage into the unknown where dream worlds merge in a space where the surreal and the unreal meet, opening a threshold to universes that transcend the tangible.
9. What are your future professional plans and dreams?
I’m exploring a new facet as a speaker, participating in design conferences, showing my work, trying to inspire new generations to create and continue dreaming. I will be participating in Adobe MAX 2025 in Los Angeles. So I really want to participate in design conferences and festivals. As well as working on my art, I’m preparing a very special personal project where I will return to my greatest passion: music. I’m currently producing a project where, in addition to composing and singing, I will create visuals to accompany it. I’m also getting more involved in animation projects.
Thank you very much.