Nicolás Leiva: Realms of Rebirth

Ruiz-Healy Art presents Nicolás Leiva: Realms of Rebirth, a solo exhibition by Argentine-born, Miami-based artist Nicolás Leiva. The exhibition will be on view in New York City from March 20 to May 9, 2025, with an opening reception on March 20 from 6:00 to 8:00 PM, attended by the artist. This marks Leiva’s third solo show with Ruiz-Healy Art and his first in a New York gallery.

Leiva’s work explores themes of life, transformation, and spirituality through vibrant ceramics that blend natural and cultural influences. Inspired by his father’s work as the founder and director of a nature reserve in Argentina, Nicolás Leiva creates fantastical ecosystems where flora and fauna merge into imaginative ceramic figures. Leiva’s sublime creations also owe their decadence to the beauty and craftsmanship of Italian art. Having spent several years working at the Bottega Gatti in Faenza, Italy, the artist absorbed Faetina ceramics techniques, which incorporate lusters of gold, platinum, ruby, and mother of pearl. Realms of Rebirth suggests a symbolic exploration of integration, transfiguration, and unseen forces that shape our world and alternate realms of existence. Just as pollinators sustain life, Leiva metaphorically draws from his diverse influences to create works between the corporeal and the mystical.

The exhibition includes new works such as Sopera, a richly decorated soup tureen symbolizing the communal ritual of people sitting, eating, and living in the lust of creation. Realms of Rebirth also features the work Sea Flora, sourced from the artist’s installation project, El Diluvio Prometido (The Promised Flood) which encouraged the artist to go beyond the four walls of his studio, taking him to the ocean, where ceramic pieces were placed on the shoreline, awaiting the slow and steady power of waves engulfing them. Sea Flora hybridizes bio-organic forms worthy of its own mythology, coming alive with a curved tail and tentacle-like symbols. “Leiva imagines at an accelerated topographical speed, folding onto one another the different metonymic processes that evoke transformation, death, and rebirth,” explains Cuban American poet and art critic Ricardo Pau-Llosa in his book, Parallel Currents. 

For Leiva, his art does not exist in just one world. Instead, it is a labyrinth of opulent structures, patterns, and ornaments. This is especially true for his Barcas series in which Leiva incorporates figures reminiscent of sea creatures and presents them, his protagonists, as spheres, spikes, and surrealist characters. In Arbol de los Sueños (Tree of Dreams), the artist utilizes aesthetics and utilitarianism to create a scene that echoes a tree of life, symbolizing the cyclical nature of existence. “My world is adjacent to the world of psychoanalysis; these are my worlds of what is to come; these are my visions of the future,” says the artist.