RICARDO PARTIDA

For the exhibition, the artist has created a new work ‘Rest on the Flight Home (2022)’ that portrays two winged figures hanging out by a body of water at night. A third figure with what might be a fishtail, can be seen holding a flaming halo as one of the winged figures urinates through it, specifically references the historic works ‘Venus and Cupid (1530) by Lorenzo Lotto and ‘Rest on the flight into Egypt (1597)’ by Caravaggio. Repurposing imagery from the great masters, Partida updates the visual iconography to include hybrid mermaid figures, queer cherubic brown bodies, and angelic golden showers.

Ricardo Partida, born in Mexico City, Mexico, and raised in the borderlands of South Texas, is a painter and recent graduate from The School of The Art Institute of Chicago’s Master of Fine Arts in Studio program. His work largely critiques and illuminates depictions of gender and desire within the Western Art Historical canon. By using the visual language of figura serpentinata (‘a serpentine figure’ used to describe a style of painting intended to make the figure seem more dynamic, wherein the central figure spirals around its own axis), his works create surrogacies of seduction that question conventional power structures. Using surface treatments and mark-making, his work explores carnal desires through the push and pull of menace and allure.