Bony Ramirez

Last updated
Bony Ramirez
Born1996 (age 27–28)
Tenares, Dominican Republic
NationalityDominican
OccupationVisual artist
Known forPaintings, sculptures, installations

Bony Ramirez (born 1996) is a Dominican-born American self-taught painter and visual artist based in Perth Amboy, New Jersey and Harlem, New York. Ramirez works primarily in paintings, sculptures, and installations that comment on elements of Caribbean visual and material culture. [1] [2]

Contents

Biography

Ramirez was born in the city of Tenares, in the Dominican Republic. He emigrated to the United States with his nuclear family when he was thirteen years old. His parents told the artist and his brother that they would go on a trip to Disney, and the Ramirez family established a home in Perth Amboy, New Jersey, where he attended Perth Amboy High School. [3] As Ramirez could not afford an arts degree after finishing high school, he went on to work in construction with his uncle. [4] [2] During his construction years, to develop a more sustainable and affordable artistic practice, he used to buy paintings from thrift stores in order to reuse their canvases. By repurposing old canvases from second-hand paintings, Ramirez created a practice that he still uses today except with a few more resourceful modifications. [5]

Artistic practice

Ramirez's paintings, drawings, sculptures, and installations often evoke personal memories and shared histories of the artist's upbringing. His colorful and intentionally disproportionate figurative paintings draw from magical realism and religious motifs within traditional art history to represent Caribbean culture and history. [4] [6] Among the artist's art historical interests is the portraiture of the European Mannerist movement and its stylistic colonial influence across Latin America and the Caribbean. [5] Because his mother was a church-goer back in the Dominican Republic, religious objects from the Renaissance play an important part in Ramirez's visual cues. As he was exposed to catholic symbols at a young age and his sculptures can sometime relate to religious stories. [7]

The fauna and flora of the Caribbean are often depicted in Ramirez's paintings and visual worlds, plantain and coconut trees, machetes and knives, seashells and crabs, appear repeatedly creating a taxonomy of the region. [8] In a 2020 interview, the artist talks about the importance of bilingual titles in his artworks and how they are presented both in Spanish and English. [9]

Career

He have had the following one person exhibitions Musa x Paradisiaca (2020) at Thierry Goldberg gallery, New York; Noblesse Oblige (2021) at Bradley Ertaskiran in Montreal, Canada; and Pa'l Pati' (2022) at Calderon Gallery, New York. [5]

Ramirez was featured in The Artsy Vanguard 2021, published by Artsy, among twenty other artists. [10] His work was featured in The New York Times review of collective exhibition Shattered Glass at Jeffrey Deitch gallery in Los Angeles, California. [11]

In 2022, he was included in the list Forbes 30 Under 30, in the Art and Style section. [12] His painting Maria (2022) was exhibited in the group show Miami is Not the Caribbean. Yet it Feels Like it, at Oolite Arts space in Miami. The painting depicts a central figure of a woman and child standing up on a tree branch and surrounded by a body of water under a blue sky, on the back of the picture, coconut trees are being blown by a heavy wind. [13]

In Spring 2023, the one person exhibition Bony Ramirez: Caribaby was presented at the Sugar Hill Children's Museum at the historic community of Sugar Hill in Harlem, New York. The show included paintings, drawings, installations, and sculptures made of found materials to celebrate Caribbean material culture and natural landscapes. [14] [2]

Ramirez received a solo show at Jeffrey Deitch's gallery in New York. The exhibition Bony Ramirez: Tropical Apex presented in Fall of 2023, featured a number of paintings and sculptures that relate to Ramirez's lived experience in the Dominican Republic and the United States. In the show, on top of his figurative colorful paintings, the artist's interest in taxidermy and the Caribbean fauna is represented through a bullhead attached to a wood panel placed at the entrance of the exhibition and by representations of cockfighting. [15] [16] [17]

In 2024, Ramirez is presenting the solo show Bony Ramirez: Cattleya at the Newark Museum of Art. The installation is organized in dialogue with the institution's collection. [18]

Collections

Ramirez's work Fiera: Views from the Outside (2021) is on view in the collection display at the Pérez Art Museum Miami, Florida. [19] The painting Adonde están los aguacates? - Where Are the Avocados? (2021) has entered the collection of the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami. [20] [7] The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; [21] and the X Museum, in Beijing, have also acquired Ramirez's work for their collection. [2]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kehinde Wiley</span> American artist (born 1977)

Kehinde Wiley is an American portrait painter based in New York City. He is known for his naturalistic paintings of Black people that reference the work of Old Master paintings. In 2017, Wiley was commissioned to paint former President Barack Obama's portrait for the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery. The Columbus Museum of Art hosted an exhibition of his work in 2007 and describes his paintings as "heroic portraits which address the image and status of young African-American men in contemporary culture."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kenny Scharf</span> American artist (born 1958)

Kenny Scharf is an American painter known for his participation in New York City's interdisciplinary East Village art scene during the 1980s, alongside Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring. Scharf's do-it-yourself practice spanned painting, sculpture, fashion, video, performance art, and street art. Growing up in post-World War II Southern California, Scharf was fascinated by television and the futuristic promise of modern design. His works often includes pop culture icons, such as the Flintstones and the Jetsons, or caricatures of middle-class Americans in an apocalyptic science fiction setting.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Derek Fordjour</span> American artist

Derek Fordjour is an American interdisciplinary artist and educator of Ghanaian heritage who works in collage, video/film, sculpture, and painting. Fordjour lives and works in New York City.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tam Joseph</span> Dominica-born British painter (born 1947)

Tam Joseph is a Dominica-born British painter, formerly known as Tom Joseph. Described as "a uniquely talented, multidimensional artist" by art historian Eddie Chambers, "Tam Joseph has contributed a number of memorable paintings that locate themselves at the centre of socio-political commentary, often making work that shocks as it amuses, amuses as it shocks. Typical in this regard are paintings for which Joseph is universally loved and respected, such as 'Spirit of the Carnival' and 'UK School Report'."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Willie Cole</span> American sculptor

Willie Cole is a contemporary American sculptor, printer, and conceptual and visual artist. His work uses contexts of postmodern eclecticism, and combines references and appropriation from African and African-American imagery. He also has used Dada’s readymades and Surrealism’s transformed objects, as well as icons of American pop culture or African and Asian masks.

Sanford Biggers is a Harlem-based interdisciplinary artist who works in film/video, installation, sculpture, music, and performance. An L.A. native, he has lived and worked in New York City since 1999.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tom Christopher</span> American painter

Tom Christopher is an American painter known for his expressionist urban paintings and murals, mostly of New York City. Christopher began as a commercial artist, and has become internationally recognized with galleries and exhibitions in France, Germany and Japan.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jesse Edwards (artist)</span> American artist

Jesse Edwards is an American artist. Known primarily for his figurative and still life oil paintings, using techniques from the European Old Masters, that often provide satirical cultural commentary. His practice also includes painted ceramic sculptures. Edwards studied oil painting at the Gage Academy of Art (2002), and has been exhibiting publicly since. He has been into graffiti twice as long as oil painting or ceramics. After moving from Seattle to New York Edwards acquired representation by Vito Schnabel Edwards work was later chosen by the curators Theo Niarchos and David Rimanelli to be included in group exhibitions alongside works by Harmony Korine, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Andy Warhol, Julian Schnabel, Dan Colen, Dash Snow, and Pablo Picasso.

Kate Clark is a New York-based sculptor, residing and working in Brooklyn. Her work synthesizes human faces with the bodies of animals. Clark's preferred medium is animal hide. Mary Logan Barmeyer says Clark's work is "meant to make you think twice about what it means to be human, and furthermore, what it means to be animal." Writer Monica Ramirez-Montagut says Clark's works "reclaim storytelling and vintage techniques as strategies to address contemporary discourses on welfare, the environment, and female struggles."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jeffrey Deitch</span> American art dealer and curator (born 1952)

Jeffrey Deitch is an American art dealer and curator. He is best known for his gallery Deitch Projects (1996–2010) and curating groundbreaking exhibitions such as Lives (1975) and Post Human (1992), the latter of which has been credited with introducing the concept of "posthumanism" to popular culture. In 2010, ArtReview named him as the twelfth most influential person in the international art world.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Henry Taylor (artist)</span> American painter

Henry Taylor is an American artist and painter who lives and works in Los Angeles, California. He is best known for his acrylic paintings, mixed media sculptures, and installations.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Firelei Báez</span> Dominican / American visual artist (born 1981)

Firelei Báez is a Dominican Republic-born, New York City-based artist known for intricate works on paper and canvas, as well as large scale sculpture. Her art focuses on untold stories and unheard voices, using portraiture, landscape, and design to explore the Western canon.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Vladimir Cybil Charlier</span>

Vladimir Cybil Charlier is an American visual artist who lives and works in New York City. Her works reflect the complex dynamics linking two important geographic markers: The Caribbean and the United States. Her parents' migration into the United States allowed her to receive an education in fine arts and become a mix media artist. Her work includes paints, drawings, sculptures and others. Today she has a variety of work collections that have been displayed in numerous exhibitions within the United States and abroad.

Christina Quarles is a queer, mixed contemporary American artist and writer, living and working in Los Angeles, whose gestural, abstract paintings confront themes of racial and sexual identities, gender, and queerness. She is considered at the forefront of a generation of millennial artists and her works shatter the societal manners of physical classification.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bisa Butler</span> American fiber artist

Bisa Butler is an American fiber artist who has created a new genre of quilting that has transformed the medium. Although quilting has long been considered a craft, her interdisciplinary methods—which create quilts that look like paintings—have catapulted quilting into the field of fine art. She is known for her vibrant, quilted portraits celebrating Black life, portraying both everyday people and notable historical figures. Her works now count among the permanent collections at the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, the Art Institute of Chicago, Pérez Art Museum Miami and about a dozen other art museums nationwide. She has also exhibited at the Smithsonian Museum of American History, the Epcot Center, the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center, and many other venues. In 2020, she was commissioned to quilt cover images for Time magazine, including the "Person of the Year" issue and its "100 Women of the Year" issue. With a multi-year wait list for private commissions, one of Butler's quilts sold at auction in 2021 for $75,000 USD.

Maia Cruz Palileo is an interdisciplinary artist based in Brooklyn, New York. Their work consists of paintings, drawings and sculptures, and explores their Filipino, American heritagethrough the examination of memory, family photographs, and oral histories.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fabiola Jean-Louis</span> Haitian artist

Fabiola Jean-Louis is a Haitian artist working in photography, paper textile design, and sculpture. Her work examines the intersectionality of the Black experience, particularly that of women, to address the absence and imbalance of historical representation of African American and Afro-Caribbean people. Jean-Louis has earned residencies at the Museum of Art and Design (MAD), New York City, the Lux Art Institute, San Diego, and the Andrew Freedman Home in The Bronx. In 2021, Jean-Louis became the first Haitian woman artist to exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Fabiola lives and works in New York City.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Danielle Mckinney</span> American artist

Danielle Joy Mckinney is a contemporary visual artist who resides and works in New Jersey. Her paintings have been included in exhibitions in United States.

Nyugen Smith is an American artist and educator based in Jersey City whose works responds to the legacy of European colonial rule in African diaspora and considers imperialist practices of oppression, violence, and intergenerational trauma. Smith's work has been featured in exhibitions at key galleries and museums which include the El Museo del Barrio and the Pérez Art Museum Miami.

Andrea Marie Breiling is an American contemporary painter known for large-scale abstract works.

References

  1. ↑ "BONY RAMIREZ". ART IN COMMON. Retrieved 2023-10-11.
  2. 1 2 3 4 "Bony Ramirez". Sugar Hill Children's Museum of Art & Storytelling. Retrieved 2023-10-11.
  3. ↑ Bruney, Gabrielle. "The Artsy Vanguard 2021: Bony Ramirez", Artsy, December 1, 2021. Accessed January 25, 2024. "Once in the U.S., his family settled in Perth Amboy, New Jersey.... 'People ask me, "Oh, you’re going to Yale, or Columbia?’" Ramirez said. 'I’m like, "No, I went to Perth Amboy High School."'"
  4. 1 2 "Bony Ramirez Makes Taxidermied Self-Portraits". www.culturedmag.com. Retrieved 2023-10-11.
  5. 1 2 3 "Bony Ramirez - Collaborations with Avant Arte". avantarte.com. Retrieved 2024-01-23.
  6. ↑ "Discover the Layered and Iconic Craft of Bony Ramirez". Art of Choice. 2021-02-08. Retrieved 2024-01-24.
  7. 1 2 Caldera, CJ Greenhill (2022-04-14). "To Mark Artnet Auctions' Art of the Americas Sale, We Spoke to Dominican Artist Bony Ramirez About Art and Identity". Artnet News. Retrieved 2023-10-11.
  8. ↑ "Bony Ramirez Makes Taxidermied Self-Portraits". www.culturedmag.com. Retrieved 2024-01-24.
  9. ↑ admin (2020-08-17). "Les Nouveaux Riches Magazine – Interview with Bony Ramirez". Les Nouveaux Riches Magazin (in German). Retrieved 2024-01-23.
  10. ↑ Editorial, Artsy (2021-12-01). "The Artsy Vanguard 2021". Artsy. Retrieved 2023-10-11.
  11. ↑ Pogrebin, Robin (Oct 13, 2021) [May 11, 2021]. "A Gallery Featuring Only Artists of Color Feels Like Change". The New York Times. Retrieved Jan 23, 2024.
  12. ↑ "Bony Ramirez - 2022-11-29 - 2023 30 Under 30: Art and Style". Forbes. Retrieved 2023-10-11.
  13. ↑ "From photographs submerged underwater to Hervé Télémaque's early paintings: must-see exhibitions in Miami". The Art Newspaper - International art news and events. 2022-11-25. Retrieved 2024-01-23.
  14. ↑ Magazine, Harlem World (2023-03-02). "Spring Shows At The Sugar Hill Children's Museum Of Art & Storytelling In Harlem". Harlem World Magazine. Retrieved 2024-01-23.
  15. ↑ Solomon, Tessa (2023-09-08). "The Can't-Miss Gallery Shows Opening in Tribeca This Week". ARTnews.com. Retrieved 2024-01-24.
  16. ↑ "Bony Ramirez: TROPICAL APEX". deitch.com. Retrieved 2023-10-11.
  17. ↑ "The Tropic And the Apex: Bony Ramirez at Jeffrey Deitch". Whitehot Magazine of Contemporary Art. Retrieved 2024-01-23.
  18. ↑ "Bony Ramirez: Cattleya — The Newark Museum of Art". newarkmuseumart.org. Retrieved 2024-02-20.
  19. ↑ "Fiera: Views from the Outside • Pérez Art Museum Miami". Pérez Art Museum Miami. Retrieved 2023-10-11.
  20. ↑ "Where Are The Avocados?". Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami. Retrieved 2024-01-23.
  21. ↑ "New Contemporary Acquisitions and Travels: In Company with Artists and Curators". Museum of Fine Arts Boston. Retrieved 2024-01-23.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.