Ronny Quevedo

Navigating nuanced relationships between the personal and the cultural, Quevedo’s work is rooted in his own family history. Quevedo’s father was a professional soccer player in Ecuador and the artist often incorporates the reconstructed and reorganized lines of athletic fields in his work. Similarly, the influence of Quevedo’s mother’s work as a dressmaker is evidenced in his incorporation of materials like muslin and wax tracing paper. “To me,” says Quevedo, “there is no division of significance; these humble technical materials can be imaginatively and resourcefully transformed. My family history, which contained lots of adaptation, embodies this capacity for transformation.” By contextualizing these technical materials with ostensibly precious substances like gold and silver leaf, ubiquitous within Andean history, he invites the viewer to interrogate the simultaneous valuation of certain luxuries and erasure of the artisans who create them. 

Beyond contributing to the formal, material, and conceptual elements of his practice, Quevedo’s family histories serve as prompts to consider the political and social implications of how bodies, or groups of bodies, exist and operate in space. “My visual language incorporates topographies that echo the strategies of pathfinding utilized by migrants. The movement of bodies, like those of constellations, posit geography and space as liminal positions, like players in space.” Through his employment of lines, grids, and diagrammatic visuals, Quevedo’s works take on a cartographic quality that not only explores the complex intersections between mainstream and marginalized cultures, but also offers the possibility of reimagining and reconfiguring geographic and historical positions. 

Central to Quevedo’s practice is the cultural heritage of the Americas. For Quevedo, pre-Columbian history “is associated with having been conquered and, thus, a sense that its culture exists in a past that is extinct. . . . When I reference Inca or Wari culture in my work, I’m looking into a cultural space and approach whose legacy continues to be influential. This is a conscious decision to resist contemporary notions of minimalism and abstraction as apolitical and asymbolic.” Positioning his works as conduits between past and present, Quevedo creates what he refers to as “portals” between peoples, cultures, and mediums. Weaving together opposing materials and diverging narratives “from the Andes to The South Bronx,” Quevedo explains, “these interpretations of a re-imagined self … give life to an ancestry of abstraction and transformational figures.”

Quevedo’s work has been the subject of numerous solo presentations, including Wall Drawing Series: Ronny Quevedo, The Menil Collection, Houston, TX (2024); Ronny Quevedo: ule ole allez, Locust Projects, Miami, FL (2022); Ronny Quevedo: offside, University Art Museum, University of Albany, NY (2022); and no hay medio tiempo / there is no halftime, Queens Museum, NY (2017), traveled to Temple Contemporary, Tyler School of Art and Architecture, Philadelphia, PA (2019), among others. In 2022, he was commissioned by Delta Air Lines in partnership with the Queens Museum to create a large-scale permanent installation at LaGuardia Airport, Queens, NY. Quevedo has participated in many group exhibitions, including Get in the Game: Sports, Art, Culture, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, CA (2024); Movements Toward Freedom, Museum of Contemporary Art, Denver, CO (2024); Gilded: Contemporary Artists Explore Value and Worth, Weatherspoon Art Museum, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, NC (2022), traveled to Hunter Museum of American Art, Chattanooga, TN (2023), and Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth, Hanover, NH (2024); and Pacha, Llacta, Wasichay; Indigenous Space, Modern Architecture, New Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2018). Quevedo’s work is in the collections of the Baltimore Museum of Art, MD; Buffalo AKG Art Museum, NY; Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center at Colorado College, CO; Denver Art Museum, CO; Minneapolis Institute of Art, MN; and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY, among others.  He is the recipient of many awards and grants, including the Trellis Art Fund Award (2024); Joan Mitchell Fellowship (2021); Jerome Hill Artists Fellowship (2019); Socrates Sculpture Park Artist Fellowship (2017); and Queens Museum/Jerome Foundation Fellowship for Emerging Artists (2016), among others.