Jesse Amado & Alejandro Diaz: Double Pleasure

Ruiz-Healy Art is pleased to present Jesse Amado and Alejandro Diaz: Double Pleasure at our San Antonio gallery, opening to the public with a free Artist Reception on Wednesday, January 29, 2020, from 6 – 8 PM. The exhibition will highlight their work in painting and a shared interest in post-conceptual art practices that are grounded in their Mexican American heritage and South Texas aesthetics. The exhibition will be on view through March 28, 2020, Tuesday – Saturday from 11 AM – 4 PM.

Jesse Amado and Alejandro Diaz have been friends and colleagues for over four decades and now, for the first time in 26 years, the artists will have coinciding exhibitions, which will bring their work in conversation with one another. While the artists demonstrate different aesthetic concerns, their distinct works become interconnected through the incorporation of found materials used to convey human experience and an underlying Joseph Beuys heritage in their social sculpture work. Exhibition catalogue writer Carla Stellweg asserts, “while the category of ‘Latino’ art and artists is a much-debated subject, the case of Amado and Diaz offers a highly sophisticated and eloquent view of Mexican American and Latino visual culture at this time.”

Jesse Amado uses paint, wood, felt, chicharron (fried pork rinds), brass, and light as materials to expand the dimensional constraints of painting. Amado explores color as material, a boundless pursuit that concludes with a visual language that embraces sensuality and beauty. The artist states, “my work endorses the quality of change and how limitless and liberating it can be for an artist. Utilizing forms, images, materials, fashions, and media of human industries, I’m able to produce commentaries on the ambiguities of modern and contemporary culture and the investments that are ultimately made by society.”

Alejandro Diaz uses a bricolage approach to create paintings using found and collected objects. Diaz’s works range from pure abstraction to figuration and address a variety of culturally relevant issues from politics, to decorative and aesthetic movements, to spirituality. The tone of his work is at times humorous, political, celebratory, and even somber and reflective. What is evident in all of Diaz’s work is the presence of the artist’s hand and his ongoing workings of disparate materials to create a sense of personal order.

About Ruiz-Healy Art

Established in San Antonio, Texas and in operation since 2006, Ruiz-Healy Art specializes in contemporary works of art with an emphasis on Latinx and Latin American artists, as well as working with prominent Texas-based artists. With galleries in San Antonio, Texas and New York City, Ruiz-Healy Art’s continuous investments in these underrepresented areas have remained a longstanding signature of the gallery program. To request high-resolution images and more information about the exhibitions, please contact the gallery at info@ruizhealyart.com or 210-804-2219. San Antonio gallery hours are Tuesday – Saturday from 11:00 AM – 4:00 PM, and by appointment. New York gallery hours are Wednesday – Saturday from 11:00 AM – 5:00 PM, and by appointment.