ARTISTS
Figure it Out: Luc铆a Vidales Selects
This exhibition opens a dialogue between Hambre鈥攁n ephemeral charcoal mural-drawing commissioned for the Museum鈥檚 ninth annual installation of the Atrium Project (2024鈥�25)鈥攁nd the Kemper Museum鈥檚 Collection. The salon-style format invites playful and open-ended readings of selected works from 1935 to 2023鈥攊ncluding drawings, photographs, paintings, prints, and collages by artists from multiple geographies. These works maintain a connection between painting and drawing, as seen in the original mural, with the goal of generating new interpretations of both the Collection and the mural.
These works explore the figure鈥檚 relationship to the frame and the picture plane, the figure-ground relationship, and the figure麓s interactions鈥攊ntersecting, overlapping, contouring, hiding, contrasting, or using negative space鈥攁s ways to express subjectivity, identity, desire, or social and political dimensions. As a painter, I find in the photographs, drawings, and paintings a shared approach to making a figure, by composing, recognizing, constructing, playing, or by figuring things out in the process of artmaking.
The exhibition unfolds in two rotations. The first focuses on figures (human and non-human) as individual or group portraits at rest, contemplation, in isolation or in moments of intimacy鈥攅voking vulnerability or entitlement. The second shows bodies in flux: realities of migration and tensions with surrounding contexts.
Traditional Western art historical canon has long used the figure to reinforce inequality. Today, thinking about the figure, as simple as it might sound, is both fascinating and problematic: a yet open field of possibilities. From realistic, caricatures, or animated鈥攚ith their representations of class, gender and identity, the alienated or wild, as well as prejudices of American popular culture鈥攖hese figures call us to question, resist, and imagine.
Some figures belong to fictional realms, serve as documents of their time, or inhabit both. Certainly, none have fixed meaning. Figures appear not only as representations, but as gestures, processes, or marks, as a form of presence. Figuring out, appearing, and emerging to our own gaze through contrast or camouflage. They become silhouettes or opaque fields, waiting, seeking where to belong and coming into focus. Figures claim a place and look back at us. - Luc铆a Vidales, Monterrey, Mexico, 2025
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This exhibition opens a dialogue between Hambre鈥攁n ephemeral charcoal mural-drawing commissioned for the Museum鈥檚 ninth annual installation of the Atrium Project (2024鈥�25)鈥攁nd the Kemper Museum鈥檚 Collection. The salon-style format invites playful and open-ended readings of selected works from 1935 to 2023鈥攊ncluding drawings, photographs, paintings, prints, and collages by artists from multiple geographies. These works maintain a connection between painting and drawing, as seen in the original mural, with the goal of generating new interpretations of both the Collection and the mural.
These works explore the figure鈥檚 relationship to the frame and the picture plane, the figure-ground relationship, and the figure麓s interactions鈥攊ntersecting, overlapping, contouring, hiding, contrasting, or using negative space鈥攁s ways to express subjectivity, identity, desire, or social and political dimensions. As a painter, I find in the photographs, drawings, and paintings a shared approach to making a figure, by composing, recognizing, constructing, playing, or by figuring things out in the process of artmaking.
The exhibition unfolds in two rotations. The first focuses on figures (human and non-human) as individual or group portraits at rest, contemplation, in isolation or in moments of intimacy鈥攅voking vulnerability or entitlement. The second shows bodies in flux: realities of migration and tensions with surrounding contexts.
Traditional Western art historical canon has long used the figure to reinforce inequality. Today, thinking about the figure, as simple as it might sound, is both fascinating and problematic: a yet open field of possibilities. From realistic, caricatures, or animated鈥攚ith their representations of class, gender and identity, the alienated or wild, as well as prejudices of American popular culture鈥攖hese figures call us to question, resist, and imagine.
Some figures belong to fictional realms, serve as documents of their time, or inhabit both. Certainly, none have fixed meaning. Figures appear not only as representations, but as gestures, processes, or marks, as a form of presence. Figuring out, appearing, and emerging to our own gaze through contrast or camouflage. They become silhouettes or opaque fields, waiting, seeking where to belong and coming into focus. Figures claim a place and look back at us. - Luc铆a Vidales, Monterrey, Mexico, 2025
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