January 17 - March 15, 2025 

Opening reception: Friday, January 17, 5-8PM

Details here

Diana Guerrero-Maciá: PAINTINGS FOR BIRDS, marks Chicago-based artist Diana Guerrero-Maciá’s third solo show with SECRIST | BEACH. On view will be a suite of ten new paintings, a series of large works on paper and an installation that includes a sound work created in collaboration with Joseph Adamik. PAINTINGS FOR BIRDS is presented in conjunction with FOLDS, a survey invitational featuring 15 artists at 1801 W. Hubbard St. Both exhibitions open on January 17 and will be on view through March 15, 2025.

Guerrero-Maciá’s post-disciplinary approach to image-making embraces the rejection of traditional ideas around the division of artistic disciplines. Instead, techniques from a variety of methodologies are combined to create a flexible approach for new ideas. With a formal approach to abstract concepts from an art historical direction, these works live at the intersection of pictorial space and textile consciousness. In other words, they are artworks that are yes/and, rather than either/or. They are works of art that don’t check a box; they are not  quilted nor painted, they are something else in-between, they are new ideas, as Guerrero-Macia calls them: unpainted pictures. 

This new series of patchwork colorfields evolve from traditional designs that date from the early 19th century quilting techniques: the Nine Patch, Flying Geese and Solmon’s Puzzle. Using this as a template imbued with an art-historically relevant post-painterly abstraction rigor, Guerrero-Maciá’s “paintings” present luscious palettes on seductive tactile surfaces. With a keener eye, viewers will note that the dedicated embrace of abstraction explores the lived experience. This includes ideas around market consumption, sustainability, and the migration of people that are expressed through color and form. Here, the combination of historical standards with contemporary quandaries strongly suggests that the dynamic between yesterday and today is a fluid reminder that tomorrow is daunting yet exciting. 

In addition to the paintings, on view will be a new series of works on paper and an installation created in collaboration with Joseph Adamik. The works on paper incorporate collage elements of nature, architecture and birds alongside monochromatic abstract shapes implying our symbiotic relationship to the world around us. The installation, titled Pourparler, features randomly generated songs and calls from 15 birds that migrate between the Caribbean & Central America and the Midwest. Emanating from the gallery’s salon space, which mimics a park after dark, the sound’s digitally generated “conversation” starts with one bird at random while others are slowly added to create rhythmic and tonal audio clusters as the bird song intersects. This manipulated yet melodic confabulation between birds coexisting with the artwork on view confirms a dedication to the elusive expansiveness of perception - both the aural and visual. 

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Diana Guerrero-Maciá’s (lives and works in Chicago) practice includes a hybrid investigation of painting, textiles, print & sculptural objects with an interest in sustainable craft practices. Her largely abstract works engage with myth, iconography, symbols, and color. She is most known for her unpainted pictures, poetic abstract paintings constructed from textiles. Guerrero-Maciá is a 2023 Lenore Tawney Fellow, 2021 John Simon Guggenheim Fellow, a Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Fellow, and a MacDowell Fellow. Her exhibitions include the Kohler Museum of Art, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Art Pace San Antonio, Elmhurst Art Museum, The Bronx Museum of the Arts, Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago and the Crocker Museum of Art. She is an alumnus of Skowhegan School of Painting & Drawing, Cranbrook Academy of Art, Penland School of Craft, and Villanova University. She has also created multiple public art commissions for the Public Art Fund, NYC, and the City of Chicago. She is a Professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Image: SOUTH-SOUTH, 2023, Dye, canvas, deconstructed clothing, & deadstock wool, and button, 57.75 x 49.75 inches