Morten SlettemeåsDark Trees with Red, 2026

Oil on canvas

19 3/4 x 15 3/4 in

About the artist

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.

About the artist

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