KATES-FERRI PROJECTS is proud to present Te Quiero, a solo exhibition of oil on panel paintings by Boris Torres, on view in the special projects section “EJES” curated by Bernardo Mosqueira, from February 7 to 11, 2024, Booth EJ25.

In Te Quiero, Ecuadorean artist Boris Torres creates portraits and narratives reimagined from film stills pulled from Hollywood genre films, vintage pornography, and European art cinema spanning from the 1930s to the present. Torres’s intimate, scaled-down, oil-on-panels perform for his audience similarly to the actors in the original motion pictures. He invites us to enter a world of unsuspecting characters, some unaware of our presence and others caught in the act. Their vulnerable expressions and the private spaces depicted in Torres's paintings entice audiences to reflect on their own moments of exposure. In “Te Quiero” our natural voyeuristic desires are roused by these alluring personas pulled from motion pictures and transformed by the artist into lush paint strokes, light and color.

Bio: Boris Torres (b. 1976, Ecuador) received his MFA in Fine Art from Brooklyn College and his BA from Parsons School of Design.  A 2019 recipient of the Leslie Lohman Museum Fellowship, as well as an Artist Resident at Virginia Center for the Arts, Torres’s work has been part of numerous museum and group shows, including the Bronx Museum of Art, Museo Muñoz Marino, La Petite Mort Gallery, Tacoma Art Museum, Leslie-Lohman Museum, Prinz Eisenherz, Bowman Gallery and Cheim & Read. His work has also been featured in Hyperallergic, The New York Times, Out Magazine and in films and television including Keep the Lights On, Tu Me Manques, Love Is Strange, American Horror Story and All the Murders in the Building.

Artist Statement: I was born in a small city in Ecuador and grew up working class, without artistic role models or exposure to art except for a few sexy paintings I stared at and escaped into during mass in church. Just before adolescence, my mother and I came to the U.S. for a better life. In the New York City public schools, I felt out of place academically, but I was lucky to cross paths with teachers who saw artistic talent in me and encouraged me to pursue it. In those art classes, I developed an artistic practice that led me to attend La Guardia High School where I excelled. I’m a New York artist through and through. Still, I felt like an outsider because it was the early 90s, and I was gay, an immigrant, and an artist who created queer images – a taboo during a time of deep homophobia and death from AIDS.  But below the surface of Manhattan, on the piers and in the clubs, I found a community of people, immigrants, artists, gay and trans people, who mirrored my experience. In those worlds, I was given license to make the kind of work that still today feels both forbidden and exciting for me. Over the years, my artwork has come to encompass media as diverse as collage, painting, watercolor and life portraiture. I look to each medium for challenges and opportunities and discovery. My heroes are artists who never separated their work from their lives, such as Alice Neel, Joe Brainard and Patrick Angus.  Their work inspires me, as does sex, cinema, photography, New York City and the people around me. Through many forms and subjects, I aspire to unearth the complexities of sexuality, gender and race through images that provoke, challenge, and embrace.    

Art Works on View  

Video of exhibition on YouTube