Details:
① Artwork:
Up All Night
This painting depicts a figure crouching on the floor of a room illuminated by a television's blue light. The figure wears a red thong with long tie strings and a dark green shirt. The pink morning light creeps in through a curtain, revealing vibrant colors in a pile of clothes by the window.
Partida's paintings feature centralized figures that explore the artist's original idea of the “Fag Fatale”—an effeminate man that brings the world to its knees. This composition is part of a body of work by the artist that draws influence from Carol Ockman’s 1995 text Ingres’s Eroticized Bodies. The text details how the 19th century French painter Ingres used a serpentine line to shift the representation of the heroic male in art—creating an "other", a homoerotic sensualized male nude, in gendered visual language. Ingres transposed lines and proportions previously associated with the mythological figure of Venus, the goddess of love, to create male subjects that were heroic figures of desire. Partida employs that same visual language to create exalted alter egos—performative avatars that obscure both the artist and the subject of the composition. The resulting works challenge conventionally by creating novel power structures.
Specs:
③ Artist:
Ricardo Partida’s work challenges conventional power structures through the creation of exalted alter egos—performative avatars that obscure the artist and the subject. The artist’s paintings frequently explore what the artist terms a “Fag Fatale,” an effeminate man that brings the world to its knees. Partida’s work examines art history and its representation of male desire, particularly gendered visual language and its relationship to the homoerotic gaze.
Ricardo Partida was born in Mexico City, Mexico in 1990. The artist received an MFA in Painting and Drawing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in Illinois in 2020 and a BFA in Studio Art from the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley in 2017.
Solo and two-person exhibitions of Partida’s work include: Death of a Hero, Rise of a Champion at Deli Gallery in New York City (2021); Final Fantasy at Julius Cesar Gallery in Chicago, Illinois (2020); Evil and Shivering, curated by Caleb Beck at Baby Blue Gallery in Chicago, Illinois (2020); and Brave New World at Hinovations Art Gallery in McAllen, Texas (2017).
Group exhibitions and art fairs that have shown Partida’s work include: 1969 Gallery in New York City; Western Exhibitions in Chicago, Illinois; the Elmhurst Art Museum in Elmhurst, Illinois; Monti8 Gallery in Latina, Italy; and NADA House on Governors Island with Baby Blue Gallery in New York City.
Partida lives and works in Chicago, Illinois.
This painting depicts a figure crouching on the floor of a room illuminated by a television's blue light. The artist employs a similar visual language to the French painter Ingres to create exalted alter egos—performative avatars that obscure both the artist and the subject of the composition.More
- Unframed
