(New York, NY) Sean Kelly is delighted to present RÍO, Ana González’s third exhibition with the gallery. Conceived as a metaphorical river, RÍO flows through cascades, forests, and tropical jungles. Employing textiles, painting, porcelain, and video the exhibition conjures memory, emotion, and material transformation. Informed by indigenous cultures and their relationship to the land, water, and forests as living entities, the exhibition offers an immersive meditation on fragile ecosystems and the urgent need to re-sanctify the natural world. 

The exhibition opens with new works from González’s Devastations series, created from sublimated photographic images of rivers flowing from the Amazon and the Andes Mountains. Drawing on ethnographic understandings of forests and waterways as sacred territories of abundance and renewal, González physically unravels the fabric of each work from the bottom up, thread by thread. This act of deconstruction becomes a powerful metaphor for the slow unweaving of nature under increasing human pressure. 

In RÍO, González introduces two new color palettes to the series: a rose hue referencing the shifting light of Amazonian sunsets, and a gold palette that alludes to El Dorado and the mythic pursuit of boundless wealth. In her use of gold, González reframes the legend, suggesting that it is the region’s natural resources that constitute its true treasure. The iconic green tones, evoke both vegetation and currency, underscoring the tension between economic exploitation and the sacred value of life, echoing Alexander von Humboldt’s assertion that nature exists as an interconnected fabric, vulnerable to disruption at every point.

González’s paintings, drawings, and watercolors hover between presence and disappearance, dissolving into mist and drizzle like fleeting recollections of paradise. They chart a geography where interior and exterior worlds converge, transforming painting into an act of resistance and a provocation, to preserve what is sacred before it vanishes.

Sculptures in Limoges porcelain are suspended as a delicate cascade of heliconias and orchids rendered in luminous white. Historically associated with purity and refinement, porcelain becomes a poetic medium through which the artist addresses ecological fragility. Each sculpture embodies both resilience and vulnerability, revealing how beauty and destruction coexist within the same fragile surface.

A new video work further immerses viewers in the rainforest, capturing the ambient sounds of birds and flowing water recorded during González’s travels by boat. This sensory portrait foregrounds the unseen labor and lived experience behind González’s practice, reinforcing the exhibition’s emphasis on process, and presence. The exhibition concludes with a vitrine displaying small porcelain sculptures alongside travel journals, sketches, and objects carried by the artist on her journeys. Together, these elements form a mnemonic archive of observation and remembrance, bearing witness to the artist’s pilgrimage through threatened yet sacred landscapes.

RÍO is ultimately a meditation on loss and persistence, on forests and rivers at risk, yet still alive in collective memory and imagination. Through the sensuality and beauty of the tropics, González invites viewers to recognize the places of power embedded within the natural world and to reconsider our responsibility to protect the environments that sustain both life and the spirit.

About Ana González: 

Ana González’s (b. 1974 artistic practice celebrates the landscapes of her native Colombia and her partnerships with the indigenous communities dedicated to their preservation. Her work serves as a vibrant tribute to the sensory richness and cultural significance of these environments whilst highlighting their crucial role in historic ecosystems. Her oeuvre bridges multiple disciplines, including painting, photography, and sculpture.

In her work González references to the 18th-century naturalist Alexander von Humboldt and his exploration of the interconnectedness of all living systems. Her Devastations series features textiles onto which the artist prints photographs of Colombia’s vulnerable environments which she then partially unravels by hand. The works preserve these spaces as sites of power, abundance, and renewal while referencing the slow disappearance of ancient ecologies.

González has worked closely with Colombian Indigenous communities, leading social and humanitarian initiatives with the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta communities, the Nukak people of Guaviare, and Misak women in Cauca. In collaboration with Cartier and the Amazon Conservation Team, González founded a health and social project in the Colombian Amazon. In November 2024 they completed a healthcare center in Murui Muina, Umancia, an indigenous settlement positioned at the intersection of three key regions: Putumayo, Caquetá, and Amazonas.

Ana González is a graduate in architecture from Universidad de Los Andes in Bogotá, Colombia. She pursued advanced studies in Art and Gender at Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland, and completed a master’s in arts and media, focusing on Photography, Printing, and Publishing, at both the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts and the École Supérieure de Commerce de Paris in France. Her work is part of significant private and public collections, including the Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Collection, the Havremagasinet Länskonsthall Museum in Sweden, the National Museum of Colombia, the Bogotá Museum of Modern Art (MAMBO), the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, CA, the JP Morgan Chase Art Collection, NY, the Bancolombia Art Collection, the Museo de la Universidad de Antioquia, Medellín, Colombia, and Vero Beach Museum of Art, Vero Beach, Florida, among others. She currently lives and works in Bogotá.