CECILIA PAREDES AND CHUCK RAMIREZ: PHOTOGRAPHING IDENTITY

Established in San Antonio, Texas and in operations since 2006, Ruiz-Healy Art is pleased to announce the opening of its new gallery space in New York City, an exhibition space dedicated to present multidisciplinary art and public programming by Latinx, Latin America, and Texas-based artists. The gallery’s inaugural exhibition, Cecilia Paredes & Chuck Ramirez: Photographing Identity, opens May 3 and runs through June 15, 2019.

Patricia Ruiz-Healy, Ph.D. says, “continuing the gallery’s mission of supporting emerging and established artists that predominantly address social issues and identity, we see the gallery’s New York City location as an essential platform to engage institutions, art professionals and art collectors to present our gallery program.”

The opening exhibition features the work of Chuck Ramirez, (1962-2010) and Cecilia Paredes. Working within issues of identity, both artists use photography to confront fundamental questions regarding the human condition.

As a San Antonio-based artist and graphic designer, Chuck Ramirez processed and deconstructed the media world in which he lived in. Using typography and digital imaging technology, Ramirez isolated and worked to recontextualize familiar objects to explore the transitory nature of human existence. As an HIV positive artist, he addressed contemporary culture as well as margins of American culture, including the Mexican-American and queer experience.

Originally from Lima, Peru, and based in Philadelphia since the early 2000s, Cecilia Paredes combines themes found in nature- origins, camouflage, transformation, and her body- to acquire multiple identities through a blend of sculptural recreations and photography. The artist works on the theme of building her own identification with the part of the world where she lives or where she feels she can call home.

The new gallery space is in Manhattan’s Upper East Side at 74th East 79th Street, 2D. It will be open to the public Tuesday through Saturday 11 AM – 6 PM and by appointment.