❮ New York

Gallery

Nov 05 - Jan 09 2027

Ricco/Maresca welcomes Marcos Bontempo back with Among the Living, an exhibition of recent works on paper in which hybrid creatures and finely drawn human figures share a world of improbable encounters. Restless brushstrokes and mottled pigment give his creatures substance, while supple contours make a human figure’s slightest gesture expressive. Born in Córdoba, Argentina, in 1969, Bontempo grew up in Ronda, Spain, where his family settled following the military coup in Argentina. His strict Catholic upbringing provides a backdrop to images in which earthly longing and otherworldly presences meet with disarming intimacy. Fields of black, rust red, and ochre gather his figures into rooms and small stages, where a couch can assume the gravity of an altar and one body can become another’s support. Cages suggest confinement, yet an open door offers no assurance of departure. Solemnity and absurdity keep close company in this private theater, whose inhabitants seem to know more about their exchanges than we do. Bontempo gives each invented being the attention and presence of a living subject, making the impossible feel intimately familiar.

Nov 05 - Jan 09 2027

Ricco/Maresca is pleased to announce the forthcoming launch of Bill Traylor Database, a free, publicly accessible, ongoing research resource dedicated to the study of Bill Traylor’s art. Developed over the past year in collaboration with Jeffrey Wolf, producer of Bill Traylor: Chasing Ghosts, the database will launch on November 2, coinciding with the 35th anniversary of Ricco/Maresca’s landmark publication, Bill Traylor: His Art, His Life (Alfred A. Knopf, 1991). To mark this occasion, the gallery will present a special video installation celebrating the life, art, and legacy of Bill Traylor (ca. 1853–1949). Departing from a traditional exhibition format, the installation brings together images of Traylor’s remarkable body of work, archival footage of Montgomery, Alabama, and selected media features exploring his enduring influence and legacy. Together, these moving images reflect the structure of the database itself: layered, interconnected, and spanning past and present.