March 7 - May 4, 2025
From cactusBARN:
“Fringes is a series figure drawings, presented within a format meant to recall the pages of a notepad used at a crime scene by a detective/reporter. The text, written in a forensic manner, describes the kidnapping, brutal physical and/or sexual assault, endured by each fictitious victim portrayed. The use of lithography crayon to draw the image on a slick surface, aims to voice the state of suspension and vulnerability of the existing evidence for each case and the lack of state commitment to solving each crime. In an attempt at honoring the true victims of Mexico’s war on the narco, the figures are drawn at a life size scale, making it impossible for the viewer to ignore. More importantly it begs the viewer to question what individual responsibility they might hold when such strategies of obscuration are used to plant terror.
Artist statement:
I envision myself as an artist and correspondent – a legman who carries back stories and situations confronted along the U.S.- Mexico border. My approach to material is experimental and incorporates drawing, painting, lithography, sculpture, collage, assemblage and installation. I use these as a powerful forum from which to investigate, address, and embody weighty subject–such as femicides, forced disappearances, persecution, unlawful imprisonment, torture, and other human rights abuses–beyond international borders.
My methods of investigation continually change and for the past couple of years I’ve been trying to understand how “participant observation” / ethnography can be used to depict the set of contingencies played upon specific groups.
Overall, I aim to induce a social collaborative experience with the viewer by referring to the relationship of the body to the object and the sense of exploitation or power. Ambitiously, I am trying to destabilize the border between artist, artwork, and audience—analogous to the socio-political border.
About the artist:
Andrei Rentería (b.1986) is a multidisciplinary artist wandering about the U.S.- Mexico frontera. His work focuses on recurrences of human right abuses such as discrimination, persecution, unlawful imprisonment, femicides, amongst others along the region.
Rentería’s work has been exhibited at the Latin American Institute of Austria, Mexic-Arte Museum in Austin, Houston’s Holocaust Museum, Museum of the Big Bend, and at The Contemporary at Blue Star in San Antonio, Texas.
He is the 2024 Democratizing Racial Justice Project’s Artist in Residence at the University of Texas at San Antonio; the 2019 George and Eliza Gardner Howard Foundation Fellow in Painting; and the recipient of The Contemporary at Blue Star’s 2018-2019 Berlin Residency, hosted by Künstlerhaus Bethanien in Berlin.”
Reception: March 7, 2025 | 5–8 pm
Closing: May 2, 2025 | 5–8 pm
613 Mission Street
San Antonio, 78210 Texas
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