Andrei Renteria, 2666
Exhibition • November 10–December 3, 2022
Closing reception Friday, December 2, 6–9pm.
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Curated by Raul Rene Gonzalez
About the Artist
Andrei Renteria is a multidisciplinary artist wandering about the U.S.-Mexico frontera. His experimental approach to material and research provides a powerful forum from which to investigate how to address and embody weighty subject matter (including torture and violence) beyond international borders. His work focuses on recurrences of discrimination, persecution, unlawful imprisonment and other human rights abuses along the region. Renteria earned his BFA from Sul Ross State University in 2010 and MFA at the University of Texas at San Antonio in 2015.
Artist’s Statement
I envision myself as a reportage artist, who carries back stories and situations confronted along the U.S.-Mexico border, where I grew up. My approach to material is experimental, and incorporates drawing, painting, lithography, sculpture, assemblage and installation. I use these media as a powerful forum to investigate how to address and embody weighty subject matter beyond international borders.
I aim to induce a social collaborative experience with the viewer, referring to the relationship of the body to the object and the sense of exploitation or power. Ambitiously, I am trying to destabilize the border between artist, artwork, and audience—analogous to the socio-political border.
Recently, I’ve been trying to understand how participant observation can be used to understand and describe the set of contingencies played upon family members, who are desperate to find their missing loved ones. By forming collectives, they attempt to pressure the Mexican government into helping them investigate, locate, and excavate mass grave sites, maintained mostly by powerful drug cartels.