The New Yorker on Feliciano Centurión: Abrigo

This Paraguayan artist, who was based in Buenos Aires, left behind a substantial and stunning body of work in 1996, when he died, of AIDS-related complications, at the age of thirty-four. His paintings on fabric and pillows (among other textiles) utilize sentimentality—in registers both earnest and edgy—with nuanced intensity. In Centurión’s first exhibition in the U.S., curated by Gabriel Pérez-Barreiro, queer aesthetics mingle with folk traditions of South America to poignant, sometimes dramatic effect. The show opens with sea-creature-themed compositions, from the early nineteen-nineties, that make ingenious use of the existing geometries of bedding, a material whose fraught, domestic allusions Centurión played with throughout his career. In the arresting “Cordero Sacrificado” (“Sacrificed Lamb”), from 1996, a dark blanket flecked with yellow paint provides a cosmic backdrop for the title’s ritual scene. Many of the smaller works here feature hand-stitched texts that range in tone from aphoristic and spiritual to observational, including the carefully embroidered, heartrendingly simple phrase “Mis glóbulos rojos aumentan” (“My red-blood-cell count increases”)...

Read the full article.