Ronny Quevedo
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Biography
Ronny Quevedo (b.1981) incorporates and subverts aspects of abstraction, painting, collage, cartography, and sports imagery in a practice spanning installation, drawings, and prints. Deeply engaged with notions of identity and the intersection of mainstream and historically marginalized cultures, Quevedo reenvisions pre- and post-colonial iconographies, offering nuanced examinations of personal and social histories. This recuperation of indigenous languages of abstraction, the revalorization of their associated labor, and the centering of a living connection between contemporary and centuries-old cultural markers remain key to Quevedo’s ongoing practice.
From the materials he uses to the themes he explores, Ronny Quevedo’s work is rooted in an exploration of his own history and identity, initially using his art as a way to understand the lives and experiences of his parents. Quevedo’s father was a professional soccer player in Ecuador and the artist often incorporates the reconstructed and reorganized lines of athletic fields in his work. Similarly, the influence of Quevedo’s mother’s work as a dressmaker is evidenced in his incorporation of mediums like muslin and wax tracing paper. “To me,” says Quevedo, “there is no division of significance; these humble technical materials can be imaginatively and resourcefully transformed. My family history, which contained lots of adaptation, embodies this capacity for transformation.” By contextualizing these materials with ostensibly precious materials like gold and silver leaf, Quevedo invites the viewer to interrogate the simultaneous valuation of certain luxuries and erasure of the artisans who create them.
Beyond contributing to the formal, material, and conceptual elements of his practice, Quevedo’s family histories serve as prompts to consider the political and social implications of how bodies, or groups of bodies, exist and operate in space. “My visual language incorporates topographies that echo the strategies of pathfinding utilized by migrants. The movement of bodies, like those of constellations, posit geography and space as liminal positions, like players in space.” Through his employment of lines, grids, and diagrammatic visuals, Quevedo’s works take on a cartographic quality that not only explores the complex intersections between the personal and the cultural, but offers the possibility of reimagining and reconfiguring geographic and historical positions.
Central to Quevedo’s practice is the incorporation of and reverence for the cultural heritage of the Americas. For Quevedo, pre-Columbian history “is associated with having been conquered and, thus, a sense that its culture exists in a past that is extinct. . . . When I reference Inca or Wari culture in my work, I’m looking into a cultural space and approach whose legacy continues to be influential. This is a conscious decision to resist contemporary notions of minimalism and abstraction as apolitical and asymbolic. Indigenous South American cultures developed their own visual language of abstraction, one that points to a lineage of thought that exists outside of the figurative and the textual, in ways not traditionally acknowledged in the Western art-historical canon.”
Expanding on the histories and possibilities of textiles and papermaking, works such as myself when i am real - sin ti soy nadie (2021) are imbued with an added dimension: a sculptural approach that emphasizes the presence of the physical body. The result of a meticulous process that involves cutting slivers of pattern paper, reassembling them into abstract compositions, and fusing their surface together with gold leaf on muslin, myself when i am real. . . is designed to be doubled over and hung in the exhibition space, so that viewers can interact with both its aesthetically refined surface and its three-dimensional presence. The incorporation of muslin and the positioning as a draped object emphasize the work’s material and conceptual connection to the living legacy of South American textiles, indicating the artist’s increasingly complex and sophisticated elaboration on his core themes.
Quevedo’s work has been the subject of solo exhibitions, including Ronny Quevedo: ule ole allez, Locust Projects, Miami, FL (2022); Ronny Quevedo: offside at the University Art Museum, University of Albany, NY (2022); Ronny Quevedo: at the line, Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center at Colorado College, CO (2021); Space of Play, Play of Space, Martin Art Gallery, Muhlenberg College, Allentown, PA (2019); no hay medio tiempo / there is no halftime, Queens Museum, NY (2017), traveled to Temple Contemporary, Tyler School of Art and Architecture, Philadelphia, PA (2019); and Home Field Advantage, Casita Maria Center for Arts & Education, the Bronx, NY (2015). Quevedo has participated in numerous group exhibitions, including El Dorado: Myths of Gold, Americas Society/Council of the Americans, New York, NY (2023); Gilded: Contemporary Artists Explore Value and Worth, Weatherspoon Art Museum, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, NC (2022), traveled to Hunter Museum of American Art, Chattanooga, TN (2024), and Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth, Hanover, NH (2024); A New Way to Travel: Delta Air Lines x Queens Museum at LaGuardia Airport, Queens Museum, NY (2022); Lux et Veritas, NSU Art Museum, Fort Lauderdale, FL (2022); ReVisión, Denver Art Museum, CO (2021); Comunidades Visibles: The Materiality of Migration, Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY (2021); Ace: Art on Sports, Promise, and Selfhood, University Art Museum, University of Albany, NY (2019); Pacha, Llacta, Wasichay; Indigenous Space, Modern Architecture, New Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2018); The World’s Game: Fútbol and Contemporary Art, Pérez Art Museum, Miami, FL (2018); Monarchs: Brown and Native Contemporary Artists in the Path of the Butterfly, Bemis Center for Contemporary Art, Omaha, NE (2017), traveled to Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami, FL (2018), Blue Star Contemporary and Southwest School of Art, San Antonio, TX (2018), and The Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Overland Park, KS (2019); The Socrates Annual, Socrates Sculpture Park, Queens, NY (2017); Open Sessions: Drawings in Context / Field, Queens Museum, NY (2015); Moving, Not Moving, The McKinney Avenue Contemporary, Dallas, TX (2014); 2014 Core Exhibition, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX (2014); Reading Lists: Artists’ Selections from the MoMA Library Collection, Museum of Modern Art, New York (2013); 2013 Core Exhibition, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX (2013); Eyes Off the Flag, Motus Fort, Tokyo (2012); El Museo’s Bienal: The (S) Files 2011, El Museo del Barrio, New York (2011); and How Soon is Now?, The Bronx Museum of the Arts, NY (2008).
Quevedo’s work is in the collections of the Buffalo AKG Art Museum, NY; Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center at Colorado College, CO; Denver Art Museum, CO; Museum of Old and New Art, Hobart, Tasmania, Australia; and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY. He is the recipient of many awards and grants, including the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Biennial Grant (2022); Joan Mitchell Fellowship (2021); Harpo Foundation New Work Project Grant (2021); Jerome Hill Artists Fellowship (2019); A Blade of Grass Fellowship for Socially Engaged Art (2017); Socrates Sculpture Park Artist Fellowship (2017); Queens Museum / Jerome Foundation Fellowship for Emerging Artists (2016); Eliza Long Prize, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (2014 & 2013); New American Paintings MFA Annual 99 (2012); BRIO Award, Bronx Council on the Arts (2011); Gloucester Landscape Painting Prize, Yale School of Art (2011); and PRINT Magazine Regional Design Annual (2008). He currently lives and works in The Bronx, NY.
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Exhibitions
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Ronny Quevedo
Composite Portals 27 Apr - 15 Jun 2024 New YorkAlexander Gray Associates, New York presents Ronny Quevedo: Composite Portals, the artist’s second solo exhibition with the Gallery. Positioning Andean textiles as conduits between the precolonial past and our postcolonial...Read more -
Ronny Quevedo
entre aquí y allá 8 Sep - 15 Oct 2022 New YorkAlexander Gray Associates, New York presents Ronny Quevedo: entre aquí y allá, the Gallery’s first exhibition of the artist’s work. Featuring a new sculpture and works on muslin and paper,...Read more
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Public Collections
Baltimore Museum of Art, MD
Buffalo AKG Art Museum, NY
Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center at Colorado College, CO
Denver Art Museum, CO
Minneapolis Institute of Art, MN
Museum of Old and New Art, Hobart, Tasmania, Australia
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY -
News / Events
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Ronny Quevedo
University at Albany January 22, 2024Ronny Quevedo is included in a group exhibition, Body Maps at the University Art Museum in Albany, New York.
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Ronny Quevedo
ANOTHER SPACE November 10, 2023Ronny Quevedo is included in a group exhibition, Spin a Yarn at ANOTHER SPACE in New York.
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Ronny Quevedo
Hunter Museum of American Art September 22, 2023Ronny Quevedo is included in a group exhibition, Gilded: Contemporary Artists Explore Value and Worth at the Hunter Museum of American Art, Chattanooga, Tennessee.
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Ronny Quevedo
Americas Society September 6, 2023Ronny Quevedo is included in a group exhibition, El Dorado: Myths of Gold at Americas Society, New York.
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Ronny Quevedo
Locust Projects November 23, 2022Ronny Quevedo's one person exhibition ule ole allez at Locust Projects in Miami, FL.
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Ronny Quevedo
Weatherspoon Art Museum September 10, 2022Ronny Quevedo included in the group exhibition Gilded: Contemporary Artists Explore Value and Worth at the Weatherspoon Art Museum.
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Ronny Quevedo
Queens Museum July 21, 2022Ronny Quevedo included in group show A New Way to Travel: Delta Air Lines x Queens Museum at LaGuardia Airport at the Queens Museum, NY with corresponding works on view for permanent installation at LaGuardia Airport.
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Ronny Quevedo
Nova Southeastern University Art Museum Fort Lauderdale April 2, 2022Ronny Quevedo's group exhibition Lux et Veritas curated by Bonnie Clearwater at Nova Southeastern University Art Museum Fort Lauderdale in Florida.
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Ronny Quevedo
University Art Museum at University of Albany March 3, 2022Ronny Quevedo in conversation with Rodrigo Valenzuela, another exhibiting artist at the University Art Museum at the University of Albany, NY.
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Ronny Quevedo
Alexander Gray Associates February 2, 2022Alexander Gray Associates announces representation of Ronny Quevedo (b.1981). Quevedo’s practice spans installation, drawings, and prints, incorporating and subverting aspects of abstraction, painting, collage, cartography, and sports imagery.
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Ronny Quevedo
Denver Art Museum October 24, 2021Ronny Quevedo included in the group exhibition ReVisión: Art in the Americas at the Denver Art Museum in Denver, CO.
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Articles / Reviews
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W Magazine
Quevedo, November 23, 2022 -
Artsy
Quevedo, November 23, 2022