Manos (Hands): San Antonio

Ruiz-Healy Art is delighted to present ​Manos (Hands) at our San Antonio gallery featuring works by Richard Armendariz and Andrés Ferrandis. The exhibition focuses on the artists' shared attention toward the language of materials and the vast physical and mental landscapes found only in our memory. The exhibition opens September 24 and will be on view until October 31.

While operating in the seemingly opposing fields of figurative and abstract art, Richard Armendariz and Andrés Ferrandis share more similarities than differences in their approach to artmaking. The artists invoke their painterly origins to explore traditional genres of painting by manipulating text, color, and materials to guide the viewer into the less tangible realms of time, memory, and self-reflection.

In Manos (Hands), Armendariz's work concerns notions of chance and being born of the right star. Light bulbs are introduced as the latest addition to the artist's repertoire of iconography, creating a new constellation that evokes belief systems like astrology, and explores how these belief systems impact our outlook on life and the challenges we face daily. Using easily digestible elements like the color blue or a plant in a vase, the artist incorporates layers of references, challenging the viewer to think about what is below the surface. Armendariz is known for his hand-carved paintings, text-based imagery and his large color-saturated woodblock prints that weave anthropomorphic narratives with tales of turmoil. Spanglish, as well as contemporary and folk song lyrics, appear frequently in his compositions.

Andrés Ferrandis is known for his evocative geometric abstract constructions redolent with the traces of perception. These works expose the complex mental landscapes created from brief moments, experiences, and memories. With a matured focus on construction and color, the artist presents to the viewer a fragment of captured time that is at once past and present. Text is employed as a subtitle to the artwork, providing the viewer with a translation of what is being expressed. Inspired by his recent residency at CRIA in Baja California, the artist has also broadened his explorations into large scale, three-dimensional text pieces that elevate the interaction between the artwork, the viewer, and the surrounding environment.