The Armory Show

Ruiz-Healy Art is thrilled to present the work of Chuck Ramirez (1962-2010) at the 2022 edition of The Armory Show in New York City. This year the fair will focus its special programming on Latinx and Latin American art. Selected by Carla Acevedo-Yates, curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Ramirez’ exhibition Long-Term Survivor  will be recreated for the first time in its entirety since the original 1999 exhibition in The Hudson Showroom at Artpace in San Antonio, Texas.

"The individual pieces explore the rituals of sustaining life and desire in the context of the AIDS crisis. Images range from abstractions of erotic toys to day-of-the-week pill boxes to leather chaps. Ramirez also presents a video piece on three monitors that display a spinning chrome ring—against a bright red wall. Working with materials and images that are part of his daily life—a life impacted by the AIDS crisis—Ramirez transforms the language and power of advertising into a call for action and compassion, expression and self-actualization."– Artpace, 1999

Although these works were exhibited more than 20 years ago HIV/AIDS is still at an endemic level and disproportionately affects Latin America, Caribbean, and Latinx communities. As a gay, Catholic, Mexican American, and HIV-positive man, Ramirez was at the forefront of activism within the HIV/AIDS Latinx community of South Texas. Thanks to antiretroviral “cocktail” therapies there are many “Long Term Survivors'' and optimism for those who are diagnosed. Despite this progress, survival requires access to medical care, resources to pay for expensive lifesaving treatments, and forging through the stigma, discrimination, and crimination that many survivors face. In the United States, an estimated 1.2 million people are living with HIV. There are an estimated 2.4 million people currently living with HIV in Latin America and the Caribbean.

About the Artist:
Chuck Ramirez was a Conceptual Latino artist and a major force in the San Antonio art community before his untimely death in a 2010 cycling accident. During the winter of 2017, the San Antonio, Texas, McNay Art Museum organized a significant survey of his work in the exhibition Chuck Ramirez: All This and Heaven Too. In 2012, The Smithsonian American Art Museum purchased Ramirez’s limited edition large-format photograph, for the institution’s permanent collect and for the traveling exhibit Our America: The Latino Presence in American Art. Ramirez’ work has been recently acquired by the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY and the Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, TX., among other museums. Ramirez was a 2002 Artpace artist in residence, selected by the curator Jerome Sans. 

As an artist and art director, Ramirez processed and deconstructed the media world in which he lived. Using typography and digital imaging technology, Ramirez isolates and recontextualizes familiar objects and texts to explore the human condition. Always personally relevant, Ramirez explored cultural identity, mortality, and consumerism through his photographs and installations; his work subverted stereotypes of those who cross cultural boundaries. Ramirez resurrects waste—photographing filled garbage bags, dying flowers, and battered, empty piñatas—reflecting on the fleeting nature of human existence. Working with materials and images that were part of his daily life—a life impacted by being HIV positive—he transformed the language and power of advertising into a call for action and compassion, expression, and self-actualization.

His work is in numerous permanent museum collections: Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; The Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington D.C.; Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, TX; The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX; The Pérez Art Museum (PAMM), Miami, FL; The San Antonio Museum of Art, San Antonio, TX; The European Museum of Photography, Paris, France; The McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, TX; El Museo Del Barrio, New York, NY; The Art Museum of South Texas, Corpus Christi, TX; The New México Museum of Art, Santa Fe, NM; Indiana University Art Museum,   Bloomington, IN; Ruby City, San Antonio, TX; Orange County Museum of Art, Newport Beach, CA; Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore MD.

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