Ana González: RÍO, presented at Sean Kelly Gallery, marks the artist’s third solo exhibition with the gallery and unfolds as a poetic journey through water, memory, and transformation. Conceived as a river in motion, the exhibition guides visitors through shifting terrains—dense forests, cascading streams, and humid tropical air—using textiles, painting, porcelain, and video to evoke both sensual immersion and ecological urgency. An opening reception with the artist invites audiences to enter this contemplative current from the very first encounter.
At the heart of the exhibition are new works from González’s Devastations series, constructed from sublimated photographic images of rivers flowing from the Amazon basin and the Andes Mountains. Drawing inspiration from Indigenous cosmologies that regard rivers and forests as living beings, González physically unravels her textile surfaces thread by thread. This deliberate act of deconstruction mirrors the gradual erosion of fragile ecosystems under the weight of extraction and industrial expansion. Newly introduced hues deepen the metaphor: a rose tone recalling the luminous haze of Amazonian dusk, and a radiant gold referencing El Dorado—here reimagined as a symbol of nature’s true wealth rather than colonial ambition. Verdant greens evoke both lush vegetation and the language of global finance, underscoring the tension between sacred land and commodified resource.
González’s paintings and works on paper appear to hover between emergence and dissolution, as though suspended in mist. Forms blur, drip, and evaporate, suggesting landscapes remembered as much as observed. In these gestures, painting becomes an act of preservation—an insistence on holding space for environments at risk of disappearance. Porcelain sculptures, crafted in Limoges and suspended like cascading heliconias and orchids, extend this meditation into three dimensions. Their luminous white surfaces convey refinement and delicacy while quietly alluding to vulnerability and fracture.
A newly created video piece completes the immersive experience, capturing ambient rainforest sounds recorded during the artist’s travels by boat. The exhibition concludes with a vitrine of journals, sketches, and small porcelain forms, assembling a personal archive of pilgrimage. Through RÍO, González invites reflection on interconnectedness and responsibility, urging a renewed reverence for the waterways and forests that sustain both ecological balance and collective imagination.
Image: © Ana González, courtesy of the Sean Kelly Gallery
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