Cris Worley Fine Arts is pleased to present our sixth solo exhibition of new works by Dallas-based artist, Ruben Nieto. Homage: Lessons from the Masters, opens Saturday, November 19th, and will be on view through December 30th, 2022. The exhibition will open with an Opening Reception at the gallery Saturday, November 19th, from 5 – 8pm, where the artist will be present. The gallery will also host an Artist’s talk on Saturday, December 3rd, at 4pm.
Ruben Nieto hit the local Dallas scene in 2010 with a major solo exhibition of paintings at what was then a brand-new Dallas Contemporary space. The large-scale oil on canvas paintings employed fragmented and reconfigured bits of imagery that were pulled from comic book subjects. Subsequent works developed into a series of “comic abstractions,” in which the comic subject matter was completely obliterated into flying fragments; these are now the cornerstone of Nieto’s 15+ year career. But, even at that time Nieto was considering another source of inspiration: art historical paintings, and in 2022, they eventually culminate in Homage: Lessons from the Masters.
Nieto’s works have always been digitally derived, whether they resulted in oil on canvas paintings, or prints on silk and vinyl, and now prints on cotton. Romantic land and seascape paintings by artists such as Willem van de Velde the Younger, Joseph Mallord William Turner, and Asher Brown Durand emerge in ghost-like fashion in Nieto’s compositions, where the past collides with the present in a resounding, dynamic crash.
Ruben Nieto was born in Veracruz, Mexico and lives and works in Dallas, TX. He holds a BFA from the Universidad de Guanajuato. He moved from Mexico to Dallas in the aughts where he received an MFA in Arts and Technology from The University of Texas at Dallas. Has was featured in New American Paintings, issue No. 114. Nieto has shown internationally in Switzerland, Germany, Spain, France, Canada, Mexico, and the U.S. He has held solo exhibitions at theSchneider Museum of Art, Ashland, OR; University of Pittsburgh at Greensburg; The Consulate General of Mexico in Dallas, Dallas, TX; the Dallas Contemporary, Dallas, TX; and the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, Dallas, TX.