Wall Drawing Series: Ronny Quevedo features a site-specific work by New York-based artist Ronny Quevedo (b. 1981). The 36-foot triptych, C A R A A C A R A, 2024, explores the relationship between origin, transfer, and translation, with each panel of the composition indicating a different step in the artist’s process. Quevedo uses drawing, particularly schematic renderings, in his practice to explore the visual languages of abstraction, cartography, cosmology, and sport from across the Americas. The artist builds upon these interests with interconnected diagrams and markings spread across his works to express the complex relationships between body, home, field, globe, and celestial spaces.
The title, C A R A A C A R A, or “face-to-face" in English, derives from the pattern paper Quevedo uses in his work—the “face,” or visible side of the fabric in sewing patterns. More abstractly, the artist sees it as a sense of encountering or confrontation that results when cultures or worlds collide. By using dressmaker wax paper as his foremost material, Quevedo can reproduce images in a way that shows the transformation from the initial drawing to its conclusion, while simultaneously connecting with his mother’s history as a seamstress.
The first panel of the work was created by smoothing dressmaker wax paper against the surface and imprinting marks by pressing into the wall. For the second panel, that same paper was pressed against the wall using heat, suffusing the surface with blue pigmented wax. In the third panel, the creased and eroded paper is applied directly onto the surface of the wall. Using mica and layers of chalk to intensify the piece, Quevedo echoes the movements and markings created in the initial two panels to form a visual allegory of what we inherit from the past, how it shapes our present, and what we will pass down to the future.
