Melissa Ríos (b. 1986, Costa Rica) is an artist based in Mexico City whose practice centers on painting and drawing. Working between figuration and abstraction, Ríos develops a surreal visual language marked by moments of emotional catharsis, where intuition, memory, and imagination converge within carefully constructed pictorial spaces.
Her paintings depict dream-like scenes populated by recurring figures, fragmented bodies, and symbolic elements that resist linear interpretation. These compositions function as emotional landscapes rather than narrative settings, allowing sensation and affect to take precedence over fixed meaning. Ríos’s use of color is central to this process: her palettes are saturated yet restrained, generating a quiet intensity that heightens the emotional charge of each work. Black spaces frequently appear within her compositions as acts of rupture: gestures of resistance that open the image toward ambiguity, depth, and imaginative projection.
The artist’s sensitivity to spatial organization and compositional balance is informed by her academic background in architecture and graphic design, which subtly underpins the structure of her paintings without overtly determining their form. Through layered processes developed from drawings and collages, Ríos constructs images that oscillate between control and release, clarity and discovery.
Ríos has presented solo exhibitions including In the Margins of What You Call Reality (JO-HS, New York, 2024), Realities in Dialogue / Realidades en diálogo (JO-HS, New York, 2023), and Más allá del mundo que existe (Cuarto 37, Costa Rica, 2021). Her work has been included in international group exhibitions such as Hybrid Vistas (Nika Project Space, Dubai, 2025), Inner Lives (Salon 21, New York, 2025), Anatomías (GARNA Gallery, Madrid, 2025), These Boots Are Made for Walkin’ (Room57 Gallery, New York, 2024, curated by Christine Mack) and The Imaginary Made Real (Berry Campbell Gallery, Curated by Paul Laster, New York).
She was a Semi-Finalist for the Erarta Foundation and ZONAMACO Art Prize (2024) and has participated in artist residencies at the Mack Art Foundation (New York, 2024) and JO-HS (Mexico City, 2022). Her work has been featured in Vogue, Galerie Magazine, Cultured Magazine, and ONDA MX.
