BIO

Miguel Rivera joined the KCAI faculty in fall 2008 to serve as chair of the printmaking department. A practicing artist as well as an experienced educator, Rivera has had numerous solo and group exhibitions in Mexico, Japan and the United States.


Formerly he was chair of the art department at the University of Guanajuato in Mexico and also served as an associate professor of printmaking and computers in art. Prior to joining the University of Guanajuato in 1998, he was an associate artist at Inkling Studio in Portland, Ore., and before that, he was an instructor at West Virginia University in Morgantown, where he completed his M.F.A. degree in printmaking and applied digital media in 1997. He earned a B.F.A. degree in printmaking and painting in 1995 from Southern Oregon University in Ashland and an associate degree in printmaking in 1992 from the University of Guanajuato.  He is a steering committee member at KC Artist Inc. and a Board member at the Kansas City Artists Coalition.


Rivera also has given visiting artist lectures in Mexico and the United States, including the Contemporary Arts Festival in Guanajuato, Southern Graphics Council conference and Alternative Printmaking Workshop at the second annual Art Students Conference in Queretaro.

This project has been possible thanks to the generous support of:


Miguel Rivera

RESIDENCIES

Cities´s dialogues

06.06.2011 to 24.06.2011


Miguel Rivera, Mexican artist and director of the Printmaking Department of Printmaking at the Kansas City Art Institute (USA), is making a three-week residency at ´ace developing his project "Citie´s dialogues and paranoia"

ARTIST STATEMENT 

In my work, images are manipulated, layered, and placed in combination with rendered drawings and prints in an environment that conveys a sacred space. The materials that are used serve as metaphors for the passage of time, memory and the human condition. The layering of the surface functions as a contemporary chaotic interpretation. Placing images in this manner helps to reconstruct, examine, and reinvent memories of my infant experience. At the same time, layering of these personal icons creates a double edge or ambiguity of related themes, ie.,  the beauty of pathos in suffering. This ambiguity relates to the experience of traveling, living in several environments, displacement while collecting a visual memory along this path. 
My core referential images have evolved into a series of abstractions from ephemeral experiences witnessing the pathos in Mexican culture. 

These works provide a platform for several inner experiences. Although these images are visually flat, they seek to engage the viewer in an installation setting by invading one´s space. Iconographic images of lethal viruses have become a base for some of my abstractions for the past two years; I have used the simple form of series and repetition of these viruses to represent their multiplicity and prevalent presence. The danger that viruses, such as Evian flu, H1N1, Bubonic Plague and Malaria represent, are in contrast with their microscopic yet fetishistic appearance. 

The integration of a viral pattern became the main driver after witnessing the massive death of birds in Arkansas this past year 2010.  A fading image of a Peruvian pigeon was a metaphor for our collective damage to the environment. At the same time, a burned drawing using a laser on paper made a symbolic and significant statement of this act