James Fuentes is pleased to present Ronny Quevedo, The Sixth Man in the gallery’s viewing room at 55 Delancey Street. The exhibition features new works on paper that employ mixed media to reconfigure the lines of the soccer field, gymnasiums, pre-Colombian textiles, and constellations to present a narrative of multiplicity.
The Sixth Man brings together selections from the artist’s ongoing series Every Measure of Zero. This series calls into question the point of origin as a malleable, unfixed position. Alluding to questions of identity, mapping, and the cosmos, these works were developed by a strict material process of em- bossing, transferring dress maker’s wax paper by heat and metal leafing. Within these limitations, the artist generates a range of surfaces and colors to illuminate the invisibility and transformations of the manual labor that relates to his mother’s career as a seamstress. Through his research in American indigenous and pre-Columbian visual language, he draws a connection between textiles and interstellar space, resulting in geometric abstractions and mathematical equations.
“Having moved to New York from Ecuador as a child, I address displacement by focusing on personal memories and social environments,” Quevedo explains. “I borrow from my father’s biography as a soccer player, my mother’s profession as a seamstress, the geometric abstraction of Wari textiles, the Nasca lines, the rubber economy of indigenous Amazonias, to name a few.”
Ronny Quevedo (b. 1981 in Guayaquil, Ecuador) holds an MFA from the Yale School of Art (2013) and BFA from The Cooper Union (2003). Quevedo is recipient of a Queens Museum/Jerome Foundation Fellowship for Emerging Artists, A Blade of Grass Fellowship for Socially Engaged Art and an Emerg- ing Artist Fellowship/Residency at Socrates Sculpture Park, among others. His numerous residencies include Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Core Residency Program at the Glassell School of Art, Mu- seum of Fine Arts, Houston, and Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture. He is currently artist in residence at Smack Mellon in Brooklyn. Recent exhibitions include Pacha, Llaqta, Wasichay: Indige- nous Space, Modern Architecture, New Art at the Whitney Museum of American Art and no hay medio tiempo / there is no halftime at the Queens Museum, and Upfor Gallery’s recent presentation at Mater- ial Art Fair in Mexico City. He is represented by Upfor Gallery.
