The artwork masterfully disrupts traditional genre constraints, breathing new political and geographical life into the classic genre. This compelling still life oil painting positions a deeply textured green nopal cactus against a monochromatic, saturated yellow backdrop, beautifully bordered by structural technical grid lines. The inclusion of floating, vivid crimson droplets infuses the composition with a profound visceral tension, converting a simple botanical subject into a poetic metaphor for land displacement, survival, and historical memory. Striking a sublime balance between analytical minimalism and emotive narrative weight, this canvas stands as a high-value acquisition for discerning collectors looking for pivotal historical works from late 20th-century conceptual masters.
In the late nineties, and after traveling to regions as diverse as the Amazon basin and the Chihuahua desert, Ríos began to develop a body of work through which he addressed the meaning of hallucinogenic plants in the indigenous cultures of the American continent; a new cartography of the Americas but this time through other means of representation that account for the artist's subjective voyage into the territories of alterity. This art work it’s part of the collection of Bernardino Arocha and Mrs.Ríos chose to use specific mediums for the “documentation” of each experience. A series of drawings made under the influence of the Peyote cactus convey in the manner of automatic writing the delirium of the artist under the effects of the drug.
Buy this museum-grade still life oil painting by Miguel Ángel Ríos online directly through The Art Design Project.
Polyptych by Miguel Angel Ríos, 1995-1997. Still life painting
Miguel Angel Ríos
Planta Agave. Ref. 96028 and Trichocereus, 1995-1997
Oil on Canvas
Dimensions
Overall size: 99 H x 134 W x 1 D in
Individual size Planta Agave. Ref. 96028: 99 H x 82 W x 1 D in. Acrylic on Canvas
Individual size Trichocereus: 75 H x 55 W x 1 D in. Oil on CanvasMounted on a stretcher
Miguel Angel Ríos studied at the Escuela de Bellas Artes in Buenos Aires before moving to New York in the 1970s to escape the military dictatorship in Argentina. He subsequently relocated to Mexico and now divides his time between the USA and Mexico.
In his work, Ríos pairs a rigorous conceptual approach with a meticulously constructed and often handmade aesthetic. Since the 1970s, he has made work about the concept of the "Latin American," using this idea as both an artistic strategy and a political problem. In the 1990s, he began creating a series of maps, which he carefully folded and pleated by hand. Marking the 500th anniversary of the "discovery" of the Americas, the maps indicate long histories of power and colonial experience, and they reference traditional Indigenous arts in the Americas, including the Andean quipu.
Since the early 2000s, Ríos has also delved into the medium of video to create symbolic narratives about human experience, violence, and mortality. For example, his videos of spinning tops--trompos--use the childhood game of tops as a backdrop for a meditation on the transience of life and the mechanics of power. In his 2012 Untitled video from The Ghost of Modernity, Ríos references high Modernism--with direct nods to John Cage, Marcel Duchamp, and Donald Judd--in the midst of the Mexican desert. "Is this ghostly geometric figure a lens through which the world can be reinterpreted?" the artist asks. "Or is it the paradigmatic principle of modernist thought that organizes the world around it? Are we inside or outside the cube? "
Ríos’s works have been shown in a number of important solo exhibitions, including Landlocked, Arizona State University Art Museum, Phoenix, Arizona, USA (2015); Miguel Angel Ríos: Walkabout, Des Moines Art Center, Iowa, USA and Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil (MACG), Mexico City, Mexico (with exhibition catalogue) (2012); Miguel Angel Ríos, Dunedin Public Art Gallery, Dunedin, New Zealand (2010); Manhattan Códice, John Weber Gallery, New York City, New York, USA and Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil (MACG), Mexico City, Mexico (1999); Miguel Angel Ríos: Neither Colour, nor height, MUCEM, Marseille, France (2017);Miguel Angel Ríos, Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires (MALBA), Argentina (2009); On The Edge, Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego (MCASD), California, USA (2009); Miguel Angel Ríos: On the Edge, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH), Texas, USA (2019); A Morir, Phoenix Art Museum, Arizona, USA (2007); and No Way Out, Röda Sten Konsthall, Gothenburg, Sweden (2019).
