Installation view, Firelei Báez, Americananana, James Cohan, 48 Walker Street, October 27 - December 21, 2022
Installation view, Firelei Báez, Americananana, James Cohan, 48 Walker Street, October 27 - December 21, 2022
Installation view, Firelei Báez, Americananana, James Cohan, 48 Walker Street, October 27 - December 21, 2022
Installation view, Firelei Báez, Americananana, James Cohan, 48 Walker Street, October 27 - December 21, 2022
Installation view, Firelei Báez, Americananana, James Cohan, 48 Walker Street, October 27 - December 21, 2022
Installation view, Firelei Báez, Americananana, James Cohan, 48 Walker Street, October 27 - December 21, 2022
Installation view, Firelei Báez, Americananana, James Cohan, 48 Walker Street, October 27 - December 21, 2022
Installation view, Firelei Báez, Americananana, James Cohan, 48 Walker Street, October 27 - December 21, 2022
Installation view, Firelei Báez, Americananana, James Cohan, 48 Walker Street, October 27 - December 21, 2022
Installation view, Firelei Báez, Americananana, James Cohan, 48 Walker Street, October 27 - December 21, 2022
Installation view, Firelei Báez, Americananana, James Cohan, 48 Walker Street, October 27 - December 21, 2022
FIRELEI BÁEZ
Madeleine (Rupture rapture maroonage), 2022
Oil and acrylic on canvas panel
113 1/2 x 78 in.
288.3 x 198.1 cm
JCG11534
FIRELEI BÁEZ
Madeleine (Rupture rapture maroonage), 2022
Detail
FIRELEI BÁEZ
Untitled (Premiere Carte Pour L'Introduction A L'Histoire Du Monde), 2022
Oil and acrylic on archival printed canvas
76 1/4 x 96 5/8 in.
193.7 x 245.3 cm
JCG13204
FIRELEI BÁEZ
Untitled (Premiere Carte Pour L'Introduction A L'Histoire Du Monde), 2022
Detail
FIRELEI BÁEZ
Olamina (How do we learn to love each other while we are embattled), 2022
Oil and acrylic on archival printed canvas
86 3/8 x 114 1/2 in.
219.4 x 290.8 cm
JCG11940
FIRELEI BÁEZ
Olamina (How do we learn to love each other while we are embattled), 2022
Detail
FIRELEI BÁEZ
Black counter gravity (Carte figurative et approximative des quantités de coton en laine importés en Europe en 1858 et 1861), 2022
Oil and acrylic on archival printed canvas
102 x 64 5/8 in.
259.1 x 164.1 cm
JCG11291
FIRELEI BÁEZ
Black counter gravity (Carte figurative et approximative des quantités de coton en laine importés en Europe en 1858 et 1861), 2022
Detail
FIRELEI BÁEZ
La Sirène (Describing the West India Navigation, from Hudson's-Bay to the River Amazones), 2022
Oil and acrylic on archival printed canvas
73 7/8 x 60 7/8 in.
187.5 x 154.5 cm
JCG11259
FIRELEI BÁEZ
La Sirène (Describing the West India Navigation, from Hudson's-Bay to the River Amazones), 2022
Detail
FIRELEI BÁEZ
Untitled (Plate 36. Vertical and Latitudinal Distribution of Animal Life), 2022
Oil and acrylic on archival printed canvas
89 1/4 x 106 3/4 in.
226.7 x 271.1 cm
JCG12093
FIRELEI BÁEZ
Untitled (Plate 36. Vertical and Latitudinal Distribution of Animal Life), 2022
Detail
FIRELEI BÁEZ
Fruta Fina, Fruta Estrańa (Lee Monument), 2022
Oil and acrylic on archival printed canvas
88 1/4 x 111 in.
224.2 x 281.9 cm
JCG13967
FIRELEI BÁEZ
Fruta Fina, Fruta Estrańa (Lee Monument), 2022
FIRELEI BÁEZ
Untitled (Les tables de geographie reduites en un jeu de cartes), 2022
Oil and acrylic on archival printed canvas
82 3/8 x 105 3/4 in.
209.2 x 268.4 cm
JCG13203
FIRELEI BÁEZ
Untitled (Les tables de geographie reduites en un jeu de cartes), 2022
Detail
FIRELEI BÁEZ
Untitled (Routes of the famous flying Clipper ships), 2022
Oil and acrylic on archival printed canvas
77 7/8 x 112 3/4 in.
197.8 x 286.2 cm
JCG13200
FIRELEI BÁEZ
Untitled (Routes of the famous flying Clipper ships), 2022
Detail
James Cohan is pleased to present Americananana, an exhibition of new paintings by Firelei Báez, on view from October 27 through December 21, 2022 at the gallery’s 48 Walker Street location. The gallery will host an opening reception with the artist on Thursday, October 27th from 6-8 PM.
For over a decade, Báez has painted transcendent chromatic interplays of abstract gesture and symbolic imagery directly onto found maps and printed materials to disrupt the boundaries they serve to delineate. For her third solo exhibition with the gallery, Báez presents a group of immersive large-scale canvases that continue and deepen her ongoing exploration of narratives of Euro-American exceptionalism. In her vivid new paintings, Báez ruminates on the foundational mythologies that have come to form a uniquely American brand of nostalgia, one shaped by the projected desire for an idealized past that never was.
The exhibition’s title is a reference to Katy Siegel’s 2010 exhibition, Americanana, whose altered spelling of Americana was intended to “evoke the absurdity of European settlers using Indian words to name soccer clubs and suburban streets…or the countless other attempts in our culture to recover a lost past.” Through her world-building painterly interventions, Báez confronts these exclusionary streams of influence, decentering them with explosive, prismatic abstract conjurations intermingled with spectacularly constructed trompe-l'œil figuration.
To view the exhibition in our Online Viewing Room, please click here.
