If you surrender to the air you can ride it (Unruly Suspension) / I know that my memory of you will live even there as I too become a child of the sea
Felipe Baeza
‘The work is very much about responding to a need and desire to create portals. The essence of my practice is the desire to belong anywhere, to belong elsewhere. That, for me, is queer making.’ - Felipe Baeza
In his practice, Mexican-American artist Felipe Baeza combines painting with drawing and textiles in small- and large-scale collage images. His heavily textured works are created through the application of layer upon layer on panel, canvas, and paper, then sanding, carving, and altering the elements within each composition. In his images, bodies - often half human, half flora - take central stage. Baeza refers to them as "unruly forms" or "fugitive bodies"; elusive entities located in in-between zones. They are both real and surreal - here and nowhere. In this liminal zone, Baeza finds, lies the potentiality for existence and future building. The titles of the works are derived from Baeza’s personal archive of texts, books, poetry and articles. If you surrender to the air you can ride it (Unruly Suspension) for example, was inspired by a line from Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon.
2021 - Ink, cut paper, graphite, acrylic, twine on paper, 167,6 x 121,9 cm
2021 - Ink, cut paper, watercolours, acrylic, graphite and varnish on panel, 30,5 x 22,9 cm
Courtesy of the artist and Maureen Paley, London
Private Collection
Felipe Baeza
°1987, Guanajuato, Mexico
Felipe Baeza’s practice incorporates painting and printmaking to examine how memory, migration, and displacement work to create a state of hybridity and fugitivity. His most recent solo exhibition Unruly Forms (2023) brought his work into the public spaces of Chicago, New York, Boston in the United States, and Mexico City, Léon, Querétaro in Mexico, and previously in Fortnight Institute, NY (2022) and Maureen Paley, London (2021). His work has been presented in exhibitions and biennials throughout the USA and Europe, most notably in the 59th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, Venice (2022), Prospect.5 New Orleans: Yesterday We Said Tomorrow, New Orleans, LA (2021) and Desert X, Palm Springs, CA (2021). Baeza has been the recipient of many prices, a.o. the Latinx Artist Fellowship, US Latinx Art Forum, USA (2023) and Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters & Sculptors Grant (2018). In 2024 he is invited as a resident at the Rauschenberg Residency, Captiva, FL, USA. Felipe Baeza received a BFA from The Cooper Union and an MFA from the Yale School of Art. He lives and works in Brooklyn, NY and is represented by Maureen Paley (London).