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 seeks to expand 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 shown in solo exhibitions in Mexico City, Costa Rica, and New York City. Ríos’s work has been featured in solo and group exhibitions with JO-HS in Mexico City and New York; her paintings were featured by JO-HS atZona MACO 2023, where one painting was a finalist for the prestigious Erarta Foundation Prize. As a Mark Art Foundation artist-in-residence in 2024, Ríos painted a new series that was shown in a solo exhibition at JO-HS NY and in a group show at Room57.
Selected works
Installation views
