September 10, 2021. By Benjamin Sutton.
Bony Ramirez’s magical realist subversions of colonialist imagery take a turn toward the autobiographical here, with a series of recent paintings augmented with sculptural elements depicting scenes and figures from his childhood. For instance, the painting The Last Day, Ultimo Día En El Campo (2021) depicts the artist and his sister as children on the day before their parents brought them from the Dominican Republic to the U.S.—unbeknownst to them, permanently. The artist added to the works’ three-dimensionality by painting palm trees directly onto the booth’s walls, and setting new sculptural works at its center, for a richly immersive experience.
“The work is more personal than his previous paintings, which were more about colonialism,” said Ron Segev, one of the gallery’s co-founders. “These works are all about the Dominican Republic, how he left, and missing it.” By the end of the fair’s first day, all the works in the booth—priced from $5,500 for the sculptures and up to $40,000 for the largest paintings—were either sold or on hold.