“Fascination with existence and being in the world,” is what drives the artistic practice of Cuban painter, Jorge Ríos. Through large-scale landscapes, fiction and the use of alternative materials such as cowhide, Ríos seeks to provoke an emotional and intuitive response in his viewers, raising the question of whether a spiritual experience is still possible through painting the twenty-first century. His series of “first emergences”, such as This was the first color (2020) and This was the first gloom (2020), draw on creationist myths and allegory.
Ríos trained at the National Academy of Beaux Arts “San Alejandro” in Havana, Cuba before going on to study at the Art Institute of Chicago School, where he was awarded the Presidential Merit Scholarship in 2019. He has hosted solo exhibitions in Havana, Miami and Los Angeles among others, and has participated in group shows in Spain, Italy, Mexico and USA.
