NADA ART FAIR NYC 2025: MELISSA RÍOS
BOOTH A203
MAY 7 - 11, 2025
Starrett-Lehigh Building
JO-HS Gallery is thrilled to participate in NADA New York 2025, presenting works by Melissa Ríos.
In a bold embrace of intuition over logic, Melissa Ríos invites viewers into an emotionally charged and deeply personal realm with her latest body of work. Rejecting the constraints of rational thought, the artist constructs paintings that are as spontaneous as they are profound—visual narratives born from quick sketches, impulsive image selections, and instinctual collages.
“I try not to rationalize anything,” the artist explains. “My process is about pulling myself out of my own logic to create something honest and unexpected.”
These visual explorations evolve into layered, cinematic scenes, often populated by a mysterious female figure—at times the artist herself, at times a stranger, and sometimes an unknown presence altogether. “She’s an anachronistic, omnipresent character,” the artist says, “always central, yet constantly shifting.”
Navigating a space between realism, surrealism, and abstraction, the paintings resist easy categorization. Rather than relying on traditional abstraction techniques, Melissa Ríos explores the abstract through emotional resonance and lived experience, resulting in a body of work that is both intimate and expansive. “My paintings are connected to my thoughts, my conflicts, my fears—they’re like a visual log of my life,” the artist shares. “There’s a moment when I know a painting is done—when it goes beyond what I expected, or when adding more would destroy its essence.”
Technically and conceptually evolved, this new phase of the artist’s work marks a moment of greater clarity and intentionality. Still, at the core remains a deep need for introspection. “I love hearing how others interpret my work, the places it takes them. But eventually, I return to where it all comes from—that solitude where painting begins.”
Melissa’s work is a testament to vulnerability, spontaneity, and the ongoing dialogue between the self and the canvas. It is a journey that unfolds not in straight lines, but in the constant rhythm of questioning, reflecting, and beginning again.
SELECTED ARTWORKS
Melissa Ríos (b. 1986)
Based in Mexico City, Melissa Ríos works primarily in painting and drawing. Exploring the fertile ground between figuration and abstraction, Ríos draws on feminist, literary, and surrealist understandings of reality and its representation.
Her paintings depict surreal, dream-like visions where figures, objects, and abstract forms overlap and interact, creating layered compositions that mediate between different realms of experience. Emotionally charged and deeply introspective, her work contemplates the spaces between the physical and the metaphysical, between imagination and lived experience.
Melissa has an academic background in architecture and advertising design, which informs her multidisciplinary approach. Alongside her painting practice, she has worked in art direction, interior space design, product design, furniture, and photography.
Her work has been exhibited extensively, with solo shows including In the Margins of What You Call Reality (JO-HS, New York, 2024), Realities in Dialogue / Realidades en diálogo (JO-HS, New York, 2023), and Más allá del mundo que existe (Cuarto 37, Costa Rica, 2021). She has participated in numerous group exhibitions, such as Anatomías (GARNA Gallery, Madrid, 2025), These Boots Are Made for Walkin’ (Room57 Gallery, New York, 2024), and Queremos Pintar (Regional Museum of San Ramón, Costa Rica, 2022).
Melissa was awarded the Erarta Foundation and ZSONAMACO Art Prize (Semi-Finalist, 2024) and has attended artist residencies, including the Mack Art Foundation in New York (2024) and JO-HS in Mexico City (2022). Her work has been featured in major publications such as Vogue, Galerie Magazine, Cultured Magazine, and ONDA MX.
VISIT ARTIST’S PAGE ︎︎︎
