Photo credit: Juan Vallejo.

Andrei Renteria

Visual Arts : Constructions/Collage , Illustrator , Muralist , Painter

Andrei Rentería is a multidisciplinary artist wandering about the U.S.-Mexico frontera/ border. His research focuses on recurrences of discrimination, persecution, unlawful imprisonments, torture, forced disappearances, and other human rights abuses along the region. He investigates how to address and embody weighty subject matter, beyond international borders, using an experimental approach to material.

Renteria earned his BFA from Sul Ross State University in 2010 and MFA at the University of Texas at San Antonio in 2015. His work has been exhibited at and at the Latin American Institute of Austria, Mexic-Arte in Austin, Houston’s Holocaust Museum, Museum of the Big Bend, and The Contemporary at Blue Star in San Antonio, TX .

He is 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.

Resume (PDF)

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MORE ABOUT THIS ARTIST

Artist Medium: Acrylic ; Collage ; Drawing Media ; Oil ; Watercolor

Artist Statement of Work

Tell us about your work (style, approach, philosophy, subject and/or theme):

I envision myself as a reportage artist “carrying back” stories and situations confronted along the U.S.- Mexico border. My approach to material is experimental–incorporating drawing, painting, lithography, sculpture, assemblage and installation–becoming a powerful forum, from which to investigate how to address and embody weighty subject matter beyond international borders.

I aim to induce a social collaborative experience with the viewer, 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.