ANA GONZÁLEZ: RÍO
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.
February 27 - April 11, 2026
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.
“[It’s] understanding that what we’re seeing right now [nature] has so little time left. It was about being able to bring the beauty of these landscapes, these nature reserves, this nature into art and to raise awareness about the fact that it’s disappearing.”
- Ana González
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.
“It’s that antagonism between the beauty of what remains, but also what is disappearing minute by minute; or the porcelain pieces that speak of beauty, but also of fragility. Everything speaks a little of that contradiction.”
- Ana González
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.