Author: Ernesto Ríos. Title: "SKULL SARS-CoV-2". Technique: Acrylic on canvas. Year: 2020. 210 cms X 210 cms.
ITP Alumni Ernesto Ríos and Mexican visual artist, recently presented a solo show untitled: "SARS CoV-2 / VIRU$" at the Museo Morelense de Arte Contemporáneo Juan Soriano, in Mexico.
In 2013 Ríos created a painting which showed his interest in calligrams, codes and monochrome paintings. Two years later, in the exhibition Code_of_the_Forest presented at the Centro Cultural Roberto Garza Sada at Monterrey Mexico, he demonstrated his proclivity and interest for computer codes and viruses. During his master's degree (2004-2006) at the Interactive Telecommunications Program at New York University, Tisch School of the Arts, Ernesto Ríos studied programming and became fascinated with how the functions of code could trigger circuits to cause a LED to light up, or a sensor to trigger a response.
The innovative disciplines that Ríos studied at NYU, combined with his studies in Hispanic Language and Literature, helped him to link fundamental interests such as literature, language and technology. Years later during his PhD at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, Ríos encompassed these previous studies with philosophy and critical thinking in parallel to his production as a transdisciplinary visual artist. In the end, everything that the human being is capable of studying, experiencing, observing, enjoying and suffering manifests itself, leaving a mark, in works that synthesize what has been lived and what has been thought.
In 2017, Ríos began to investigate viruses, with the intention of being able to represent them figuratively, through the superimposition of codes and encrypted languages, to the point of making non-object paintings that are related to possible staves of digital melodies or well of scientific visualizations of proteins that have inspired him. In this way, he has explored the contrasts of black and white with the expansion of positive and negative spaces on the surface of his canvases.
In the state of Morelos, where Ríos lives, there is an important scientific community from which he obtained a lot of support. Some researchers showed him the complete DNA sequence of SARS-CoV-2, represented by almost 30 thousand letters that make up the genome: G (Guanine), T (Timine), C (Cytosine) and A (Adenine). The determination of the genome of the virus was the first step for its control and, in the case of Ríos, for its pictorial and artistic representation.
Ernesto Ríos is a multi-disciplinary visual artist who works with a diverse palette of tools: drawing, painting, video, photography, animation, virtual reality, performance, interactive art and net-art.
He was born in Mexico where he studied Photography, Hispanic Literature and Linguistics, History of Art and Fine Arts. Ernesto holds a Masters Degree from Tisch School of the Arts (Interactive Telecommunications Program) at New York University. Ríos holds a Doctorate (PhD) from RMIT University.
He has had 29 solo exhibitions in countries like Australia, Cuba, Mexico and the United States, and 65 group exhibitions in major cities such as London, Paris, Tokyo, New York, Valencia, São Paulo, Mexico City and Melbourne.
Text by Gabriela Gorab, previously published at Milenio Newspaper in Mexico, edited by Alfredo Campos Villeda