CV | Press | Exhibitions

Farley Aguilar mingles raw graphite lines with expressive gobs of oil paint, collapsing periods of time; he intuits that reworking snapshots of the American past with painting’s tactile immediacy can reveal something about the state of the nation today. Aguilar intervenes in the way images mediate our relationship to history and, by extension, the present. The notion of humanity is at the core of his practice: restoring dignity to those who have been denied it and destabilizing the posture of those responsible for withholding it. Aguilar is concerned with the structural and institutional violence, bolstered by cultural conditioning, that sustains American ideology and perpetuates cycles of oppression. While his subject matter is purportedly historical, the deadpan gaze of many of his figures yanks these scenes into the present. A sense of social justice undergirds Aguilar’s canvases, as he broaches the painter’s position as one of ethical responsibility. Something hopeful also seeps through his multicolored scenes: an intimation that if (and only if) history is acknowledged and its remnants confronted, new paths forward can be forged.

Farley Aguilar (b. 1980, Managua, Nicaragua) lives and works in Miami, US. He has had recent solo exhibitions at Lyles & King, New York, NY; HOW Art Museum, Shanghai, CN; Edel Assanti, London, UK; SPURS Gallery, Beijing, CN; and Night Gallery, Los Angeles, US; among others. Recent group exhibitions include Toward the Celestial: ICA Miami’s Collection at 10 Years, Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami, Florida, US; South Florida Cultural Consortium, Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami, Miami, US; Recent Acquisitions, Akron Art Museum, Akron, US; A Very Anxious Feeling: Voices of Unrest in the American Experience; 20 Years of the Beth Rudin DeWoody Collection, The Taubman Museum, Roanoke, US; This is America, Kunstraum Potsdam, Potsdam, DE; Fragmented Bodies, Albertz Benda, New York, US; On the Road II, curated by Larry Ossei-Mensah, Oolite Arts, Miami, US; Shifting Gaze: A Reconstruction of the Black & Hispanic Body in Contemporary Art, The Mennello Museum, Orlando, US; and We are the people. Who are you?, Edel Assanti, London, UK. His work is in the collections of the Bass Museum, Miami, US; Institute of Contemporary Art Miami, Miami, FL; Pérez Art Museum Miami, US; Brown University, Providence, US; Akron Art Museum, Akron, US; Orlando Museum of Art; Aurora Museum, Shanghai, CN; Yuz Museum, Shanghai, CN; Dangxia Art Space, Beijing, CN; Xiao Museum of Contemporary Art, Suzhou, CN; and Zhuzhong Art Museum, Beijing, CN; among others.