Descripción de la Exposición
To feel a then and there is Felipe Baeza’s first solo exhibition at kurimanzutto. The show brings together portraits, composite works that combine printmaking, collage, and embroidery, and glass sculptures. Its title references the book Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity (2009) by Cuban theorist José Esteban Muñoz, who proposes a shift in time and space to reveal the insufficiency of the present and to open up the possibility of imagining alternative futures.
Baeza incorporates Muñoz’s ideas and in turn imagines these futures by depicting bodies in transformation: suspended, in a state of escape, lacking a fixed identity or sense of belonging. His figures defy imposed limits and find new ways of inhabiting the world. The artist uses titles such as A form that never settles II and A self that is not quite here but always in process to reinforce this notion of constant change— of beings in flux who reject stability and embrace the unpredictable and the unfinished.
Material processes are essential in Baeza’s work. He allows pigments to seep into the paper and materials to retain their autonomy, followed by a deliberate process of erosion and abrasion; generating fluid and uncertain results. This technique resonates with the corporealities he portrays— always shifting, refusing a fixed definition.
Works such as This time and place is not enough, Unruly Forms IV, and Fragments of memories reveal his exploration of texture and relief as extensions of the body and its surrounding space. Through threads, inks, varnishes, and collage, Baeza builds surfaces where volumes appear to expand the figures or accompany their movement.
At the core of the exhibition is a series of eleven portraits depicting writers, thinkers, and creators from moments of 20th century counterculture who have challenged the status quo to live on their own terms –even in marginal or clandestine spaces. Rather than fix their images, Baeza uncovers their traces, capturing fragments of their presence in gazes, layers of color, and gestures that hint at worlds yet to be discovered.
His creative process functions as a collage in itself. The bodies in his works take shape through fragments of paper he has collected over the years. “We are a combination of different times,” says Baeza, and his pieces reflect this: layers of color, plaster, and other materials accumulate on the paper like skin in transformation. In this way, the surface acquires its own memory, holding remnants of past and present moments that, as they overlap, construct new possibilities of existence.
About the artist
Fusing collage, painting, printmaking, and other techniques, Felipe Baeza (b. 1987, Celaya, México) creates multilayered, textural works exploring notions of the body to distort alternative modes of inhabiting. Baeza’s sensually rich and visually arresting works evoke both mythic dimensions and contemporary themes. He depicts figures within densely layered paintings, portraying them in different states of becoming and at times abstracting them to the point of invisibility. Baeza’s figures are hybrid,“fugitive,” and “unruly,” merging the human and the nonhuman to create fantastical images that conjure realms of myth, spirit, and imagination. Untethered to specific temporal or spatial referents, Baeza’s figures construct alternative possibilities for themselves as autonomous and multi-networked subjects. As the artist explains of his own fascination with the fragmented body, “If queerness were a project, the project would never be complete. It’s this incompleteness that allows for imagination.” Baeza received a BFA from Cooper Union and an MFA from Yale University. His residencies include Federico Sevilla Sierra Residency, Mullowney Printing, Portland, OR (2023); and the Lower East Side Keyholder Residency, New York (2010).
Baeza has been awarded the Latinx Artist Fellowship, US Latinx Art Forum (2023); the NXTHVN Studio Fellowship Program, New Haven, CT (2019); and the Josef & Anni Albers Foundation Traveling Fellowship (2017). In 2022, he was a guest scholar at The Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles. Baeza was awarded the Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise in Visual Arts (2024); the Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters & Sculptors Grant (2018) and the Michael S. Vivo Prize for Drawing (2009).
Baeza’s work is included in the collections the Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus, OH; Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA); Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden; the North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh; the San Jose Museum of Art (SJMA), CA; the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, CT; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. Baeza lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.
Felipe Baeza — Imagen cortesía de kurimanzutto
Premio. 14 abr de 2025 - 12 may de 2025 / Madrid, España
Exposición. 24 abr de 2025 - 31 may de 2025 / Max Estrella / Madrid, España
Formación. 08 may de 2025 - 17 may de 2025 / Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía (MNCARS) / Madrid, España