Ricardo Partida

The Future of Our Plans: SAIC Graduate Class of 2020

Graduates

The Future of Our Plans: SAIC Graduate Class of 2020

Master of Fine Arts in Studio, Painting and Drawing

RICARDO PARTIDA ( b.1990) is a painter and recent graduate from The School of The Art Institute of Chicago’s Master of Fine Arts in Studio program. His work largely critiques and illuminates depictions of gender and desire in the Western Art Canon. By using the visual language of figura serpentinata, his works create surrogacies of seduction that question conventional power structures. Through the use of surface treatments, mark making, and the quality of line attributed to Carol Ockman’s 1995 text Retracing the Serpentine Line, his work explores carnal desires through the push and pull of menace and allure. Born in Mexico City, Mexico, and raised in the borderlands of South Texas, Partida has exhibited his work nationally including Texas, Chicago, and New York.

Oh How I Enchant Thee, 2019, Oil on canvas, 24 x 32 in.

A Dream of Ganymede, 2019, Oil on canvas, 40 x 40 in., Photo by Bun Stout

Ricardo Partida - Put the Tip In Then Die Slo

Put the Tip In Then Die Slo, 2019, India ink and acrylic on canvas, 76 x 40 in., Photo by Olivia Alonso Gough

Serpent's Bloom, 2019, Oil on canvas, 30 x 15 in., Photo by Olivia Alonso Gough

Daybreak Eros, 2020, Oil on wood panel, 24 x 16 in.

A Lover's Quarrel, 2019, Oil on canvas, 26 x 24 in., Photo by Bun Stout

Ricardo Partida - Melting Into The Night

Melting Into The Night, 2020, Oil on canvas, 72 x 60 in.

Dusty Rogue, 2019, Oil on canvas, 72 x 60 in., Photo by Bun Stout

Ricardo Partida - Like a Thief In The Night

Like a Thief In The Night, 2019, Oil on canvas, 40 x 40 in., Photo by Olivia Alonso Gough

Nightcap, 2019, Oil on canvas, 36 x 48 in., Photo by Bun Stout

Growing up queer and brown in the borderlands of South Texas, I have always felt a desire to represent unconventional ideas of sexuality and gender through visual art. Living in Chicago as a queer man and navigating and negotiating heteronormative spaces, I have learned to utilize my queerness as both an arming and disarming mechanism to ensure my safety.

During my time at The School of The Art Institute of Chicago I came across a text by Carol Ockman titled Ingres’s Eroticized Bodies, this text contributed to my practice by allowing me to further understand the visual language in my work.

By shifting the heteronormative gaze in the Western Art canon to a less conventional subject, I create work that questions power structures through unconventional depictions of masculinity and seduction in visual art.

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