Myrna Quiñonez
b. 1987, Mexico
At once wild and chaotic, while simultaneously conventional and subdued; such oxymoronic descriptions may, it seems, be fitting of artist Myrna Quiñonez, hailing from Mexico and presently based in the UK.
Since moving to Bristol at the start of the pandemic in 2020 Quiñonez has created a unique language altogether of her own, wherein more traditional conventions of British landscape paintings seem to have been filtered through some sort of digital codex: transformed via syntax error or destroyed through a printer error and repurposed for our viewing.
However, Quiñonez masterfully executes the works entirely out of paint. Using an arsenal of painterly tools and tricks that seem to refute easy reading or explication. These are landscapes for the 21st century, wherein a new generation of painters are using illusory tricks and a vernacular that speaks to image manipulation, an intentional subversion of expectation, and a playful, reverential, and very tongue-in-cheek 'middle finger' to what we've come to understand as the painted idyll.
The artist herself views these radical striations as questioning the very concept of space and place itself. Her images are filtered into, and experimented upon, with an iPad - thereafter retranslated back onto the painterly plane. What she refers to as "abstraction that toys with figurative traditions," interesting that she refers to the figurative - possibly, injecting herself as the omniscient creator, the one responsible for this radical new landscape composition.
Her bucolic scenes have become riotous and anarchic, imbued with a complexity of symbols that - be they random or intentional - seem to provoke profound questions into the nature of (landscape) painting, image creation, and yes, even the vast terrain of AI and random computer generation. These so-called 'politics of perception' are equally charged with Quiñonez's understanding of space and her unique relationship to place, which striated with layers of cultural meaning related to her sense of displacement and confusion.
"Nature held at arm’s length denatured as artifice. Filtered hyperpastoral, picturesque complexity." However one prefers to describe these works, the one certainty is that they are laden with social, cultural, and contemporary meaning. Be it her elusive and subjective method of 'capturing' a landscape" of her concern with the politics of perception. "What technologies have shaped [our relationship to nature], and how are the filters and effects of a terminally online culture altering the way we look at the landscape?"
BEERS is thrilled to announce Quiñonez's exhibition for the fourth quarter of 2024, and we eagerly welcome this exciting young talent to our growing roster of artists.
MYRNA QUIÑONEZ (b. 1987) currently lives and works in Bristol. Quiñonez graduated from Guanajuato University in 2011.
Solo exhibitions include: The Picturesque, Pound Arts, Corsham, UK (2023); Landscape Synthesis, Cass Art, Bristol, UK (2020); Site, Don Quixote Iconographic Museum, Guanajuato, Mexico (2019); Síntesis de un Trayecto, Galería Dos Topos, Leon, Mexico (2019); El Cine Mexicano de la Época de Oro, Asamblea Legislativa del Distrito Federal, Mexico City, Mexico (2018) and Distance, Gene Byron Museum, Guanajuato, Mexico (2018).
Group exhibitions include: South by South West, Burr Johns International, London, UK (2024); Más allá de la Imagen II, Trapo Galería, San Miguel de Allende, Mexico (2023); A Quiet Place, Galería Jesús Gallardo, Teatro Manuel Doblado, Leon, Mexico (2020); Intersections, The Painting Center, New York, USA (2019); Nueve de Guanajuato, Casa Diego Rivera Museum, Guanajuato, Mexico (2019); Maker Heights Collective, The Old Ship, Cornwall, UK (2019); A Quiet Place, Trap Galería, San Miguel de Allende, Mexico (2019); Esto es Ahora, Contemporary Art Auction, Morton Subastas, Mexico City (2019) and Lotería de la Apariencia, Galería Dos Topos, Leon, Mexico (2019).
Fairs include: Contemporary Art Fair, Queretaro, Mexico (2019).