Wall Drawing Series: Ronny Quevedo: The Menil Collection
Ronny Quevedo's solo exhibition at The Menil Drawing Institute, Houston, TX.
The institution's press release follows:
Wall Drawing Series: Ronny Quevedo features a site-specific work by New York-based artist Ronny Quevedo (b. 1981). The 36-foot triptych, C A R A A C A R A, 2024, explores the relationship between origin, transfer, and translation, with each panel of the composition indicating a different step in the artist’s process. Quevedo uses drawing, particularly schematic renderings, in his practice to explore the visual languages of abstraction, cartography, cosmology, and sport from across the Americas. The artist builds upon these interests with interconnected diagrams and markings spread across his works to express the complex relationships between body, home, field, globe, and celestial spaces.
The title, C A R A A C A R A, or “face-to-face" in English, derives from the pattern paper Quevedo uses in his work—the “face,” or visible side of the fabric in sewing patterns. More abstractly, the artist sees it as a sense of encountering or confrontation that results when cultures or worlds collide. By using dressmaker wax paper as his foremost material, Quevedo can reproduce images in a way that shows the transformation from the initial drawing to its conclusion, while simultaneously connecting with his mother’s history as a seamstress.
The first panel of the work was created by smoothing dressmaker wax paper against the surface and imprinting marks by pressing into the wall. For the second panel, that same paper was pressed against the wall using heat, suffusing the surface with blue pigmented wax. In the third panel, the creased and eroded paper is applied directly onto the surface of the wall. Using mica and layers of chalk to intensify the piece, Quevedo echoes the movements and markings created in the initial two panels to form a visual allegory of what we inherit from the past, how it shapes our present, and what we will pass down to the future.
About the artist:
Ronny Quevedo received his BFA from Cooper Union in 2003 and his MFA from the Yale School of Art in 2013. From 2012 to 2014, he was a CORE Fellow at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Quevedo had a solo exhibition no hay medio tiempo / there is no halftime at the Queens Museum, New York (2017), and his work was included in the group exhibition Pacha, Llaqta, Wasichay: Indigenous Space, Modern Architecture, New Art at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2018). Quevedo was one of six artists commissioned to create large-scale permanent installations at New York’s LaGuardia Airport; Pacha Cosmopolitanism Overtime was unveiled in 2022. His work is represented in the collections of the Denver Art Museum and the Buffalo AKG Art Museum, among others.
Wall Drawing Series: Ronny Quevedo is curated by Kelly Montana, Associate Curator, Menil Drawing Institute. The Drawing Institute’s Wall Drawing Series began in 2018 as part of the Drawing Institute’s commitment to seeking new approaches to the form and language of drawing. Past participants include Marc Bauer, Mel Bochner, Roni Horn, Marcia Kure, and Jorinde Voigt.
This wall drawing is generously supported by Jereann Chaney; Dillon Kyle and Sam Lasseter; Scott and Judy Nyquist; Leslie and Shannon Sasser; Bill Stewart and Johanna Brassert; and Elizabeth and Barry Young/UBS Private Wealth.
Installation view of C A R A A C A R A, 2024, at the Menil Drawing Institute, Houston, TX. Photo: Paul Hester
