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Ruiz-Healy Art is delighted to present Manos (Hands) at our San Antonio gallery featuring works by Richard Armendariz and Andrés Ferrandis. The exhibition focuses on the artists' shared attention toward the language of materials and the vast physical and mental landscapes found only in our memory. The exhibition opens September 24 and will be on view until October 31.
While operating in the seemingly opposing fields of figurative and abstract art, Richard Armendariz and Andrés Ferrandis share more similarities than differences in their approach to artmaking. The artists invoke their painterly origins to explore traditional genres of painting by manipulating text, color, and materials to guide the viewer into the less tangible realms of time, memory, and self-reflection.
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Richard Armendariz
In Manos (Hands), Armendariz's work concerns notions of chance and being born of the right star. Light bulbs are introduced as the latest addition to the artist's repertoire of iconography, creating a new constellation that evokes belief systems like astrology, and explores how these belief systems impact our outlook on life and the challenges we face daily. Using easily digestible elements like the color blue or a plant in a vase, the artist incorporates layers of references, challenging the viewer to think about what is below the surface. Armendariz is known for his hand-carved paintings, text-based imagery and his large color-saturated woodblock prints that weave anthropomorphic narratives with tales of turmoil. Spanglish, as well as contemporary and folk song lyrics, appear frequently in his compositions.
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Richard ArmendarizBeauty Marks: Son of Velazquez VI, 2020Signed and dated on back of artworkOil on birch panel24 x 24"
61 x 61 cm"I’ve always drawn on art and art history as references, the three major genres of painting: landscape, portraiture, and still life. I always go back to that iconography as a way to invigorate my own self-exploration."
- Richard Armendariz
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Richard ArmendarizLaught Till We (Couldn't Breathe), 2020Signed and dated on back of artworkCarved oil on birch panel24 x 24"
61 x 61 cm"Everybody can understand a plant in a vase, everybody can understand a coyote, a bull, or a crow. These aren't difficult things to understand. But if you allow them, they speak on a whole other set of layers and levels going back to art history, to mythology, to popular culture, and to belief systems. It’s very layered, but in the front end it’s candy. It’s like a neon sign...I love taking that iconography and breaking it down and challenging you to think about it differently."
- Richard Armendariz
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Richard ArmendarizBlown Off Course, Guided By Spirits, 2020Signed and dated on back of artworkCarved mixed media on panel48 x 48"
121.9 x 121.9 cm"I’ve always used language and text in my work but I'm thinking about that as it relates to people in my life recently that I’ve lost, friends and family, and grappling with that in the only way I know how: with a little bit of sugar, a little bit of humour, and trying to make sense of what I’m doing now."
-Richard Armendariz
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Andrés Ferrandis
Andrés Ferrandis is known for his evocative geometric abstract constructions redolent with the traces of perception. These works expose the complex mental landscapes created from brief moments, experiences, and memories. With a matured focus on construction and color, the artist presents to the viewer a fragment of captured time that is at once past and present. Text is employed as a subtitle to the artwork, providing the viewer with a translation of what is being expressed. Inspired by his recent residency at CRIA in Baja California, the artist has also broadened his explorations into large scale, three-dimensional text pieces that elevate the interaction between the artwork, the viewer, and the surrounding environment.
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Andrés FerrandisIslas #3, 2020Silkscreen polyester and mylar, thread, found objects, oil and acrylic painting56 x 18 x 2.5"
142.2 x 45.7 x 6.3 cm"I think my side as a painter is more connected to landscaping than to still life or portraiture. For me, landscaping has a really important connection with time and light...it’s a metaphysical, abstract, painted or constructed part of time or memories."
- Andrés Ferrandis
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Andrés FerrandisIslas, 2020Wood, polycarbonate, found object, silkscreen cardboard, oil and acrylic painting22 x 16 x 3 1/2"
55.9 x 40.6 x 8.9 cm"In the last 15 years, I’ve had an evolution...I look much more into construction, architecture, and constructivism than into painting. And this thing that is construction, that is time, is also very associated with color. I think color is one of the most important essences of art and the relationship with the eye."
-Andrés Ferrandis
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Andrés FerrandisAmate I (Yo Te Cielo), 2020Archival print 1/1 on handmade amate paper94 x 45.5"
37 x 17.9 cm"I don’t have much residence in the art scene today because I create something that is sometimes difficult to define. It’s not a painting, it’s not photography, it’s not an installation, it’s kind of a mix. I like to use text or words because I have the need to translate the painting for the viewer to understand. It’s kind of a subtitle feel."
- Andrés Ferrandis
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Artists
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Richard "Ricky" Armendariz
Ricky Armendariz was born in El Paso, Texas. He received his BFA from the University of Texas at San Antonio and MFA from the University of Colorado at Boulder. In 2008, Armendariz received the Artpace Supplemental Travel Grant for travel to Mexico City, and in 2013, he was selected to participate as the Artist-in-Residence in the Blue Star Contemporary Berlin Residency Program in partnership with Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin, Germany. In 2017, Armendariz was selected to be the first Artist-in-Residence for the DoSeum in San Antonio, Texas.
Armendariz's artworks can be found in prestigious collections, including the Denver Art Museum, Denver, CO; Davis Museum, Wellesley, MA; San Antonio Museum of Art, San Antonio, TX and The McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, TX.
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Andrés Ferrandis
Born in Valencia, Spain, Andrés Ferrandis studied at the University of La Laguna and received his MFA in painting from the University of Seville in 1997. Ferrandis' first exhibitions were accompanied by Bancaixa awards from Instituto Valenciano de Arte Moderno and Fundación Bancaja Valencia, followed by travels in Cuba, New York, and Madrid. A resident of Miami since 2002, he has split his time between Florida, México and Spain, for much of the past decade.
Ferrandis's work has been featured in numerous international publications, and he has exhibited in many museums including the Miami Art Museum, Miami, FL, and Instituto Valenciano de Arte Moderno, Valencia, Spain.
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Manos (Hands): San Antonio
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