Cortavenas
September 23 – November 4, 2023
Rusha & Co. is proud to present Juan Arango Palacios: Cortavenas, the artist’s debut solo exhibition with the gallery. Originally born in Colombia, Palacios has navigated through life in the United States as a queer latino, carving a life for himself as an artist—a painter, a sculptor, and a weaver–and portraying love and heartbreak through fantastical realism in colorful, bold works.
In Cortavenas, Palacios mourns and celebrates an alternate self: the Juan that could have been had he never moved away from Latin America in his youth. Tender moments and emotional connection are portrayed in works that explore imaginary narratives of queer experiences that are set in Palacios’s hometown of Pereira, Colombia. This place becomes a city of mirrors, reflecting the world in and about it, and a staging ground for fantastical narratives of love, yearning, enduring love, and occasionally conflict. A Juan who had never left Colombia sings to us from the twin mountains which overlook Pereira.
The male figures dwelling within this body of work, occasionally toeing the line of self-portraiture, inhabit their canvases as ghosts of a past never lived. They find love in the Guadual, intimacy in the darkness of night, belonging on the floors of the strobe-lit dancehall. They find damnation for their orientation and paradise in loving embrace. Tattoos adorn the bodies on display, commemorating ideals, loved ones, and symbols of struggle and of beauty. On the surfaces of their skin, the world and their inner selves are channeled. It is only from his new life that Juan can dream of the experiences of that potential path he’s moved away from, an ephemeral truth visible in distanced visitation.
Life is a voyage with more shipwrecks than navigators. The expressive nature of making these works has functioned as a type of bloodletting with Palacios opening up his veins onto the canvases. After all, cutting open the skin is the crucial first step to permanently marking the body. Within Palacios’s works can be found a mourning for Latin America, especially for the queer community who find themselves in conflict with the past, with traditions of machismo, gender norms, and with the demands of a conservative Catholic culture. This is a self-mourning, not for the Juan responsible for Cortavenas, but for the Juan that would have been.
Juan Arango Palacios (b. 1997, Colombia) lives and works in Chicago. Recent exhibitions include El Brillo en Sus Ojos (with Vani Aguilar), Roots & Culture Contemporary Art Center, Chicago (2023, two-person); Boyfriend Material, Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design, Milwaukee (2023); Final Fantasia (with LaNia Sproles), FLXST Contemporary, Chicago (2023, two-person); Verano Perpetuo, The Room Gallery, London (2023, solo); and Another Day in Paradise, Rusha & Co. (2022).
Juan Arango Palacios
Amor Nocturno, 2023
oil on canvas
40 x 30 in.
101.6 x 76.2 cm
