黑料不打烊

MOCA North Miami is pleased to present the most comprehensive survey to date of work by Ra煤l de Nieves (born in Michoacan, 1983; resides in New York City), which reconnects the artist鈥檚 exuberant material sensibility to his roots in punk music and performance, devotional ritual, and celebratory queerness.

De Nieves鈥� work investigates decadence, desire, and divinity in relation to material, emotional, and spiritual realms. The artist is inspired by his childhood in Michoacan, Mexico, where public religious rituals and private devotional acts included elaborate costuming, performances, and theatrical components; as well as by queer punk scenes in San Diego, San Francisco, and New York where he found his artistic voice. Whether working in collaboration with other artists and musicians, or as a solo practitioner making labor-intensive paintings, sculptures, drawings, installations, and environments, de Nieves articulates an aesthetic of abundance through an economy of means. Elaborate anthropomorphic figures shimmer and seduce from afar, but a closer look reveals that they are encrusted in beads, crystals, plastic jewels, sequins, cardboard, and other readily-available items that the artist transforms through a laborious, ritual-like practice.

The exhibition鈥檚 title came about through ongoing conversations between the artist and curator Risa Puleo. The idea of the journey, such as the Fool鈥檚 Journey of the Tarot card sequence or the archetypal narratives at the root of oft-repeated stories, is important to de Nieves and manifests in objects such the life-size carousel which will occupy MOCA鈥檚 exhibition space. Circling endlessly in a performance of fantasy and delirium, the carousel motif suggests the cosmic time of the Eternal Return. Obsidian is a volcanic stone that was used by the Nauha people of pre-Columbian Mexico as a spiritual portal used to speak with ancestors. Smoky and obscure, one must look at obsidian鈥檚 reflectivity obliquely (through it instead of at it) to shift the mirror reflection into a portal interacting with those who came before. For de Nieves, art-making is a process of creating a mirror for yourself; it is a tool of awareness and a means of externalizing an interior state which offers the possibility of transmuting emotional energy into physical energy and moving it from the body into material containers in the world. The ritual-like process by which de Nieves makes his opulent, anthropomorphic creatures is the means by which he imbues materials with spiritual essence and power. Such power is felt throughout the exhibition and embodied in works such as the artist鈥檚 signature stained glass installations and performances, and across a range of genres in which the artist channels alternate dimensions.