ITP ALUM ERNESTO RÍOS PRESENTS A SOLO EXHIBITION AT MMAC
Ernesto Ríos: SKULL SARS-CoV-2 / VIRU$ at the Museo Morelense de Arte Contemporáneo (MMAC)
By Gabriela Gorab
In 2013 Ríos created a painting which showed his interest in calligrams, codes and monochrome paintings. Two years later, in the exhibition Code_of_the_Forest presented at the Centro Cultural Roberto Garza Sada at Monterrey Mexico, he demonstrated his proclivity and interest for computer codes and viruses. During his master's degree (2004-2006) at the Interactive Telecommunications Program at New York University, Tisch School of the Arts, Ernesto Ríos studied programming and became fascinated with how the functions of code could trigger circuits to cause a LED to light up, or a sensor to trigger a response.
The innovative disciplines that Ríos studied at NYU, combined with his studies in Hispanic Language and Literature, helped him to link fundamental interests such as literature, language and technology. Years later during his PhD at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, Ríos encompassed these previous studies with philosophy and critical thinking in parallel to his production as a transdisciplinary visual artist. In the end, everything that the human being is capable of studying, experiencing, observing, enjoying and suffering manifests itself, leaving a mark, in works that synthesize what has been lived and what has been thought.
In 2017, Ríos began to investigate viruses, with the intention of being able to represent them figuratively, through the superimposition of codes and encrypted languages, to the point of making non-object paintings that are related to possible staves of digital melodies or well of scientific visualizations of proteins that have inspired him. In this way, he has explored the contrasts of black and white with the expansion of positive and negative spaces on the surface of his canvases.
In the state of Morelos, where Ríos lives, there is an important scientific community from which he obtained a lot of support. Some researchers showed him the complete DNA sequence of SARS-CoV-2, represented by almost 30 thousand letters that make up the genome: G (Guanine), T (Timine), C (Cytosine) and A (Adenine). The determination of the genome of the virus was the first step for its control and, in the case of Ríos, for its pictorial and artistic representation.
In his artistic approach, the plastic particularity, the materiality and the relationship with the technological make up a whole, and a unique style at the same time which seems to be solidified with the pigments in the canvas: transparencies, glazes, infinite shades of gray, matte and shiny blacks, in addition to opaque and luminous whites.
“Currently, we are living in a kind of dungeons and dragons strange game where the human being is incessantly fighting against an invisible virus. In this recent exhibition at MMAC, the viewer experienced to encounter with oneself, managing to a better understanding of a global pandemic, the planetary consciousness is greater”, Ríos affirms.
Through the superimposition of two codified languages as layers of space-time and symbols, Ríos approaches the complexity of the epoch in which we live. The borders of reality and virtuality dissolves constantly, similar to the metaverse proposed by Mark Zuckerberg. The theme of this solo show made up of a compilation of two years of work in which Ríos has been able to articulate works enriched by a transdisciplinary vision that goes beyond visual improvisations and the limiting borders of specialties, which highlights him as one of the most proactive contemporary artists of his generation.
Ernesto Ríos work offers an eloquent and critical interpretation of the pandemic. His works oscillate between geometry, programming, genetics, statistical data, hidden symbols, numerology, concrete poetry, scientific visualizations, ASCII language and many other references that intervene and expand between opposites among extremes of absence of color, light, dark, death and life.
_____________________________________________________________
Ernesto Ríos is a multi-disciplinary visual artist who works with a diverse palette of tools: drawing, painting, video, photography, animation, virtual reality, performance, interactive art and net-art.
He was born in Mexico where he studied Photography, Hispanic Literature and Linguistics, History of Art and Fine Arts. Ernesto holds a Masters Degree from Tisch School of the Arts (Interactive Telecommunications Program) at New York University. Ríos holds a Doctorate (PhD) from RMIT University.
Ríos has had 28 solo exhibitions in countries like Australia, Cuba, Mexico and the United States, and 65 group exhibitions in major cities such as London, Paris, Tokyo, New York, Valencia, São Paulo, Mexico City and Melbourne.
Follow Ernesto Ríos: https://www.instagram.com/_______ernesto_rios/?hl=es
———
Text by Gabriela Gorab, previously published at Milenio Newspaper in Mexico, edited by Alfredo Campos Villeda
Credits:
Ernesto Ríos