MELISSA RÍOS
b. 1986, Costa Rica
Biography
Based in Mexico City, Melissa Ríos works primarily in painting and drawing. Mining the fertile ground between figuration and abstraction, Ríos draws on feminist, literary, and surrealist understandings of reality and its representation.
Ríos paints surreal, dream-like visions. Figures, objects, and abstracts overlap and aggregate like veils mediating between realms of experience. Full of emotional charge and presence, the paintings imagine the spaces between the physical and metaphysical, between imagination and experience.
With training in architecture and advertising, Ríos is a multidisciplinary artist and thinker. She is often involved in multiple projects at a time, taking on roles in art direction, interior design, product design, furniture and photography. She has exhibited her paintings in solo exhibitions at Galeria Cuarto 37 in 2021, Costa Rica and collective exhibitions in Valoarte 2020, Costa Rica and Queremos Pintar at the Regional Museum of San Ramón, Costa Rica. A former JO-HS fellow, Ríos’s work has been featured in group exhibitions with the gallery, the gallery’s contribution to Zona Maco 2023, and in her debut solo exhibition at JO-HS NY in September, 2023.
