Chuck Ramirez: Minimally Baroque: Ruiz-Healy Art

The exhibition, Minimally Baroque, is a tribute to Chuck Ramirez and his practice as well as the first posthumous exhibit of his work. Quarantine, Broom, Santos, Trash Bags and Coconut Series, selected by curator Victor Zamudio-Taylor, for the Blue Star Contemporary retrospective offers a rare view of Ramirez’s method of working in sequences, presenting several almost-complete collections of his most minimalist series. Ramirez’s other celebrated series like: Candy Tray, Pinatas, Seven Day, Purse Portrait, and Acenar are concurrently on view at Ruiz-Healy Art.  

Beginning in the mid-1990s, Ramirez took the skills that he used to design catalogues and product labels to transform objects from beyond the periphery of consumer desire — worn-out dust brooms, wilting flower arrangements — into chic, radiant images. Ramirez was a master of rasquachismo, art that elevates the simple, often cast-off remnants of everyday life to high art status. He faithfully depicted the undervalued bits of the local, but the art that resulted is far from vernacular.

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