For “Stab of Guilt”, the primary in depth analysis program on René Treviño A 24-year apply on the Wellin Museum of Artwork in Clinton, NY, amongst his different works, the artist has put in 119 work, every 18 by 18 inches. There are disparate pictures, some historic, others up to date, all variations of the circle: heraldry, Aztec symbols, foreign money, pictures of the solar and star patterns, a manhole cowl, a disco ball.
This assortment offers a way of the fluidity with which this Dallas-born, Baltimore-based queer Mexican artist regards the aesthetic world: he’s not involved with inflexible hierarchies of being. What he cares about is connecting the disparate, layered elements of himself that exist past conventional markers of identification.
Treviño—who has exhibited on the Arlington Arts Middle in Virginia, the Baltimore Museum of Artwork, the Wadsworth Atheneum in Connecticut, and the White Field in New York Metropolis—is exclusive in not treating identification as a collection of bins to be checked. , or a set of partitions to guard, however as a substitute as a collection of paths to discover.
One other group of work, the “Celestial Physique-ody-ody” collection (2020-23) – named after a tune by widespread hip-hop musician Megan Thee Stallion – incorporates pictures of coral organized like mind matter adjoining to pictures of Earth seen from area. These works, which measure 36 by 36 inches, are a heterogeneous mixture of artwork historical past, Mexican cultural historical past, and the on a regular basis curiosities of American pedestrian tradition.
In dialog with the artist, he defined: “My artwork is basically an try to convey all these items collectively.”
At first, I mistook these work for prints, however found they’re fastidiously hand-painted acrylics on DuraLar semi-opaque archival movie. One other theme of the present emerges right here: Treviño needs his work to be acknowledged as the idea of artwork, It’s he needs its complexity and splendor to captivate the viewer. Nevertheless, the underlying work required to get the job completed will be obscured by its grandeur.
On the entrance to the exhibition there’s a trio of clothes items that the artist titled “Regalia, Instinct”, 2023; “Regalia, Forecast”, 2023; and “Regalia, Premonition,” 2023. Three mannequins carry robes resembling European coronation capes, embellished with fake jaguar fur and sequin appliquéd magpie items, and the robes are topped with sequin masks adorned with wildly patterned headdresses of actual pheasant feathers. The trio is carried out on a glittering stage, coated in a shimmering gold lamé curtain, blurring the excellence between artwork, style and theater. This pomp is so luxurious and the presentation so excellent that it appears as if these variations between the genres of artwork are arbitrary and never mandatory. The artist, who has labored in theater, discovered the most effective of their exuberant collaboration.
Nonetheless, I can think about a viewer being confused by different works within the present, for instance, the leather-based items that embrace “Tree of Life Rainbow” (2017), which reveals a rainbow rising from a Mixtec image of the Selden Codex. It’s unclear whether or not these are supposed to be representations of historic paperwork or revisionist histories—an try to queer the canon, that’s, to create space inside it for hybrid, hyphenated folks like Treviño. However for the artist, the variations between varieties of work are usually not essential to the structure of identification; they’re a part of the human being within the up to date world.
Treviño’s analysis consists of different works, resembling “Sunspots by Day, Asteroids by Evening,” a collection of digital prints and blended media on bamboo paper, which I discovered much less interesting, and an attractive giant “Self-Portrait” of a rooster with a languidly lengthy black tail attempting to rise right into a yellow solar. Essentially the most compelling side of “Stab of Guilt” is Treviño’s demonstration that identification is a splendid factor and that severe, attentive care in exploring it might really feel loads like a celebration.
By way of June 9, the Wellin Museum of Artwork, on the campus of Hamilton School, 198 School Hill Highway, Clinton, NY, (315) 859-4396; hamilton.edu/wellin.
