We are pleased to announce our first exhibition of 2025, Diana Guerrero-Maciá: PAINTINGS FOR BIRDS. This exhibition 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 a salon 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.

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.

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.

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