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Firelei Báez

Gallery Exhibition at 48 Walker St

MAR 5 - JUL 2, 2020

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Large brown painting installed next to smaller painting

Installation view, Firelei Báez, 48 Walker St, March 5 - April 25, 2020

Figure contemplating a blue painting

Installation view, Firelei Báez, 48 Walker St, March 5 - April 25, 2020

View of two paintings

Installation view, Firelei Báez, 48 Walker St, March 5 - April 25, 2020

Figure contemplating a painting

Installation view, Firelei Báez, 48 Walker St, March 5 - April 25, 2020

view of long gallery with three paintings installed

Installation view, Firelei Báez, 48 Walker St, March 5 - April 25, 2020

view of three large paintings

Installation view, Firelei Báez, 48 Walker St, March 5 - April 25, 2020

figure in front of two paintings

Installation view, Firelei Báez, 48 Walker St, March 5 - April 25, 2020

figure contemplating painting

Installation view, Firelei Báez, 48 Walker St, March 5 - April 25, 2020

Ciguapa over map of world game

FIRELEI BÁEZ
Untitled (Le Jeu du Monde), 2020
Oil and acrylic on archival printed canvas
105 x 131 3/4 x 1 5/8 in.
266.7 x 334.5 x 4 cm

 

JCG11288
 

Close-up of a mpa with planta and furry, amorphous body painted over it

FIRELEI BÁEZ
Untitled (Le Jeu du Monde), 2020
 

Detail

close up of large bulbous fruit

FIRELEI BÁEZ
Untitled (Le Jeu du Monde), 2020
 

Detail

green, purple, blue, gestural abstract overlayed on canvas

FIRELEI BÁEZ
Untitled (Drexciya), 2020
Oil and acrylic on canvas
90 x 114 3/4 in.
228.6 x 291.5 cm


JCG11393

purple wavy lines over an abstract background

FIRELEI BÁEZ
Untitled (Drexciya), 2020
 

Detail

abstract blue, white, and brown close up of a painting

FIRELEI BÁEZ
Untitled (Drexciya), 2020
 

Detail

Plant over map of merchandise flow in France

FIRELEI BÁEZ
Untitled (Flow of merchandise in France on railways and waterways in the year 1856), 2020
Oil and acrylic on archival printed canvas
78 x 60 5/8 in.
198.1 x 154 cm


JCG11292
 

deep green leaves

FIRELEI BÁEZ
Untitled (Flow of merchandise in France on railways and waterways in the year 1856), 2020

 

Detail

Crouching ciguapa over correct chart of Hispaniola

FIRELEI BÁEZ
Untitled (A Correct Chart of Hispaniola with the Windward Passage), 2020
Oil and acrylic on archival printed canvas
104 1/4 x 122 3/4 in.
264.8 x 311.8 cm

 

JCG11260


 

multicolored feet over a mpa of the Hispaniola

FIRELEI BÁEZ
Untitled (A Correct Chart of Hispaniola with the Windward Passage), 2020

 

Detail

Crouching ciguapa over map of terra nova

FIRELEI BÁEZ
Untitled (Terra Nova), 2020
Oil and acrylic on archival printed canvas
102 7/8 x 132 3/8 x 1 5/8 in.
261.1 x 336.1 x 4 cm

 

JCG11293
 

close up of large bulbous fruit

FIRELEI BÁEZ
Untitled (Terra Nova), 2020

 

Detail

sprouting plants

FIRELEI BÁEZ
Untitled (Terra Nova), 2020

 

Detail

Amorphous serpentine figure over a map of the Caribbean

FIRELEI BÁEZ
Untitled (Anacaona), 2020
Oil and acrylic on archival printed canvas
96 3/8 x 127 3/8 in.
244.6 x 323.5 cm

 

JCG11257
 

serpentine plants and reptile-like structures coiled together

FIRELEI BÁEZ
Untitled (Anacaona), 2020

 

Detail

Blue ocean abstract over canvas of illustration of United States Marine Hospital

FIRELEI BÁEZ
Untitled (United States Marine Hospital), 2019

Oil and acrylic on archival printed canvas
100 x 127 1/2 x 1 3/4 in.
254 x 323.9 x 4.4 cm

 

JCG11077
 

abstracted water form

FIRELEI BÁEZ
Untitled (United States Marine Hospital), 2019

 

Detail

Central ciguapa figure mounting an enlarged reproduction of an 1846 map depicting the Third Punic War

FIRELEI BÁEZ
Untitled (Baubo), 2020
Oil and acrylic on archival printed canvas
86 3/4 x 132 3/4 x 1 5/8 in.
220.3 x 337 x 4 cm

 

JCG11287
 

amorphous furry body emerging from water

FIRELEI BÁEZ
Untitled (Baubo), 2020

 

Detail

raging waters with a red plant emerging from it

FIRELEI BÁEZ
Untitled (Baubo), 2020

 

Detail

Press Release

Firelei Báez - - Exhibitions - James Cohan

James Cohan is pleased to present an exhibition of new paintings by Firelei Báez, on view from March 5 through July 2 at 48 Walker Street. This is the artist’s second solo exhibition with James Cohan.

 

To explore the exhibition in our Viewing Room, please click here. 

 

Firelei Báez casts diasporic histories into an imaginative realm, re-working visual references drawn from the past to explore new possibilities for the future. Often depicting strong, shape-shifting female protagonists, her paintings incorporate motifs sourced from regional mythologies and historical artifacts alongside cues from science fiction and fantasy, to envision identities as unfixed, and inherited stories as perpetually-evolving.

 

Her second exhibition at James Cohan features new paintings in which figuration, symbolic imagery, and calligraphic gesture are overlaid onto large-scale reproductions of historical maps and documents. Driven by the migrant experience of navigating and articulating spaces that are both familiar and physically distant, Báez's new body of work is grounded in archival research into individual and collective modes of organizing space: the ways in which built infrastructure—and conceptions of place and community—reflect and reinforce social relations conditioned by gender, race, and class. For more than a decade, Báez has painted directly onto found cartographic or printed materials to disrupt the boundaries they serve to delineate. Questioning notions of past and present, mark-making and painterly gesture become means of situating subjugated personal memory and experience in dialogue with narratives of the Western tradition. The works in her exhibition carry forward this long-standing interest while upscaling source materials onto large-format canvas to allow for intervention in human-proportion.

 

Maps courtesy of David Rumsey Map Collection, David Rumsey Map Center, Stanford Libraries.

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