KATES-FERRI PROJECTS in partnership with Laundromat Art Space is delighted to present Francisco Donoso, Victoria Martinez, and Eric Manuel Santoscop-Mckillip in CHROMA FUTURES on view March 1 to April 1, 2023 with an artists’ reception Saturday, March 4th from 6 to 9pm at 185 NE 59th Street, Miami Florida 33137.

Through their distinct use of abstraction and materials, the three artists create unique places and spaces in their work. These real and imagined places offer and reveal alternative worlds, systems, and modalities. Their new visual language conveys unseen views of the past and the possibility of the future that strives to shift the present. 

Donoso, Martinez, and Santoscoy-Mckillip share vibrant colors in their different approaches to abstraction. Donoso takes mylar strips from the edges of his other paintings to make original acrylic and acrylic ink paintings. He assembles multiple horizon lines by stacking and layering these semi-translucent horizontal strips, forming these imagined lands that push against the picture plane. The light passes through the mylar and Plexi-backing to activate the wall with soft neon tones. In a second series, Donoso takes the negative space between chainlink fences, an oft-used motif in his work, as the shape of his work. He creates colorful interdimensional portals inside of the shape to form constellations between the invisible fence. Donoso renders a future that is caring, bright, and welcoming for undocumented immigrants, like himself, in the liminal space of his abstractions. 

Martinez paints and dyes textiles in her work, creating an intuitive language as she layers silk and cotton. Similar to the drying process in Donoso’s mylar work, chance plays a role in how each sheer layer interacts with the next. Martinez sews and initiates gestural stripes and patterns on the surface of the fibers, which is inspired by the urban environment, architecture, and landscapes. Referencing the grid and its significance to public art, the artist reimagines the framework by honoring culturally specific references to place. Martinez draws attention to the power of femininity and its connections to society and art history. Bringing life and curiosity to material discovery, Santoscoy-Mckillip’s vividly colored sculptural paintings also pull from cultural and architectural details like Martinez’s work. His forms, patterns, and colors are inspired by the US-Mexico border vernacular structures, especially the heavily stuccoed surfaces. By highlighting this similarity between the buildings on both sides of the border, the artist provides a different cultural narrative for the divide between the two countries. By standing between sculpture and painting as modernist artists as Ellsworth Kelly has done, Santoscoy-Mckillip creates contemporary anchors that propose a joint and borderless reality. Foreshadowing Donoso’s utopic future, the work unearths the shared histories and culture of the peoples on both sides of the border, especially that of El Paso, where Santoscoy-Mckillip grew up. 

 The three artists employ abstraction and seductive colors to create alluring imagined futures. For Donoso and Santoscoy-Mckillip, the boundless landscape and architecture cast no restrictions. Without borders, people might see the humanity in one another. For Martinez, her work breaks down systems and justly centers on the power of the handmade. The “place” in the show is earth, our one shared home. Donoso, Martinez, and Santoscoy-Mckillip engender visual possibilities that shape future understanding of the past and present.

Francisco Donoso is a transnational artist based between NYC and Miami. Born in Ecuador, but raised in Miami, FL, he's been a recipient of DACA since 2013. He got his BFA from Purchase College and participated in residencies in Miami at Laundromat Art Space, in New York at Wave Hill as a Van Lier Fellow, Stony Brook University, The Bronx Museum Artist in the Marketplace, and the Kates-Ferri Projects Residency among others. Francisco has participated in solo and group exhibitions throughout the US notably at El Museo del Barrio, The Bronx Museum of Arts, Children's Museum of Manhattan, Wave Hill, The University of Virginia, Kates-Ferri Projects, Field Projects, Second Street Gallery, Baik+Khnessyer, Laundromat Art Space, and SPRING/BREAK LA. He is a recipient of an Artist Corp Grant from NYFA and a Cultural Solidarity Fund Grant. His work is in corporate and private collections like the Capital One, the Memorial Sloan Kettering, and the Times Inc Collections. He is represented by Kates-Ferri Projects. Donoso’s work has been written about in various exhibition catalogs, Hyperallergic, CRUSHfanzine, The Latinx Project Intervenxions, The Financial Times, The Village Voice, and others.

Victoria Martinez is an artist who honors her Mexican-American ancestry through abstraction. She produces textile-based projects including installation art, painting, and sculpture. Her work is inspired by murals, graffiti, ancient sites, architecture, and the urban environment. She has exhibited at venues including the Yale University Art Gallery, the National Museum of Mexican Art, the Logan Arts Center at the University of Chicago, Transmitter Gallery, and the Perrotin Gallery viewing salon. Her work has been supported by The Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library Research Fellowship at Yale University, the Actos de Confianza Grant through the National Association of Latino Arts and Cultures (NALAC), and a travel grant through the Theaster Gates Rebuild Foundation. Martinez holds a BFA from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design and an MFA from Yale University School of Art in Painting and Printmaking. Upcoming projects include a solo exhibition at The Chicago Cultural Center curated by Kristin Korolowicz and an exhibition through the Lit & Luz Festival at Museo Universitario del Chopo in Mexico City. Martinez is currently the inaugural artist selected through the Climate Engagement through Art in Cities fellowship and will be leading a mural with Yale University and the City of New Haven.

Eric Santoscoy-Mckillip is an artist living and working in Brooklyn, NY. He was born in 1989 and raised in the U.S./Mexico borderland city of El Paso, Texas. Eric earned a BFA from the University of Texas at Austin, in 2011, a Masters in Interdisciplinary Studies from the University of Texas at El Paso in 2015 focusing on art education and border studies, and a MFA in Fine Art from the New York University in 2017. He has shown in Texas, New Mexico and New York.

Press Release Exhibition Catalogue Art Works on View: Francisco Donoso, Victoria Martinez & Eric Santoscoy-McKillip Price List Exhibition on YouTube