Jorge Rios
Jorge Rios holds a BA in painting from the National Academy of Arts “San Alejandro” in Havana, Cuba. In 2021 earned his BFA at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Currently enrolled in the MFA program at Washington University in St. Louis.
The work of Jorge Rios transcends the flatness of ordinary visual language reaching the subtlety, ambivalence and complexity that we perceive more clearly like in other art forms such as music or poetry. Rios tries to establish through his art a link between the individual experience of reality and the totality of existence. Whether you call it God, the Truth, the Idea, the Spirit, the Da-sein, the Being, or the Nothingness… In other words, “art for me has the mission of redeeming the being out of the mundanity of the human condition, by stimulating what is divine, universal and eternal in it.
The most important intellectual influences in my life derive directly from my Cuban and Latin American identity. I grew up an avid consumer of Magical Realism literature, especially the work of Jorge Luis Borges, Juan Rulfo, Gabriel García Márquez, Julio Cortázar, and the Cuban Alejo Carpentier, who developed the term “Lo Real Maravilloso” (The Marvelous Real) to describe the fantastical quality of Latin American history and culture: where the everyday life is intrinsically mixed with pre-Columbian indigenous mysticism, the Spanish Catholic dogma and African pantheistic religions.
- Jorge Rios
EDUCATION
2023 MFA. Washington University in St. Louis. MO
2021 BFA. The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. IL
OTHER EDUCATION
2024-2025 NYC Crit Club. The Canopy Program. NY
SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2024 for my next trick… Pan American Art Projects. Miami, FL
2021 Random Specific. Pan American Art Projects. Miami, FL
2021 La Edad del Viento. Pan American Art Projects. Miami, FL
2019 June 16, 2018. Pan American Art Projects. Miami, FL
2017 Cellar Door. Cevor Latin American Art. Miami, FL
2015 Las Moscas. Threshold One. García Squared. Kansas City, MO
2013 Recent Work. Habana Libre Gallery. Havana, Cuba
2012 Ode to my Generation. 11 Havana Biennale. Havana, Cuba
2011 Living is Easy with Eyes Closed. 23 y 12 Gallery. Havana, Cuba
SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2025 Raccoon Energy. NYC Crit Club, NY
2025 A Short Lived Torture of Cacophony. HIERRO Contemporary, NY
2024 XXL. Brintz + C O U N T Y. Palm Beach, FL
2023 The Air That Inhabits. Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum. St. Louis, MO
2023 Protection No Longer Assured. SOLO Collection. Madrid, Spain
2022 ABCDEFG. Pan American Art Projects. Miami, FL
2020 100 Years of Cuban Art. Pan American Art Projects. Miami, FL
2017 Art vs Fetichism. Pan American Art Projects ANNEX. Miami, FL
2017 City Remix. Concrete Space. Miami, FL
2014 Threshold One. García Squared Contemporary. Kansas City, MO
GRANTS & AWARDS
2023 James Bernard Haggarty Scholarship. NYC Crit Club. The Canopy Program. NY
2021 Chancellor's Graduate Fellowship. Washington University in St. Louis. MO
2019 Presidential Merit Scholarship. The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. IL
COLLECTIONS
El Espacio 23. Jorge M. Pérez Collection. Miami. FL
SOLO Collection. Madrid, Spain
