Miguel Ferrando
Miguel Ferrando
Works on Paper (1975–1995)
September 24 – October 25, 2025
1 Rivington Street, New York
CANDICE MADEY is pleased to present Works on Paper (1975–1995), the first solo exhibition of Miguel Ferrando’s work since 1990. The exhibition highlights Ferrando’s romantic and sensual approach to landscape and portraiture, offering intimate portrayals of family and friends alongside the two places that shaped his life as an artist—the Dominican Republic and New York City.
Born in Santo Domingo in 1957, Ferrando moved to New York at the age of five but returned frequently to the Dominican Republic, where the city and its culture remained central to his practice. His palette was shaped by the tropical light and lush vegetation of the Caribbean, and frequently incorporating a postmodern mélange of cultural motifs. At times, his work addressed the tension between inherited colonial structures—encountered at the Escuela de Bellas Artes, where he trained, and in the architecture of Santo Domingo—and his deep love of European painting traditions, with echoes of Velázquez, Goya, Manet, Cézanne, Turner, and El Greco emerging throughout his work. Over two decades, he created a distinctive style that shifted effortlessly between genres with a deft handling of watercolor, as presented in this exhibition, as well as working in oil, graphite, and collage.
Ferrando studied at the Fashion Industries High School in Manhattan where he met his close friend Darrel Ellis, who he later lived with in the 1980s. As a young artist in New York, he lived off Delancey Street and was deeply embedded in downtown life, performing drag at the Pyramid Club on Avenue A, and forming close bonds with artists including Richard Brintzenhofe, Allen Frame, Malcolm Morley, Ann Wilson, and others. His life was cut short by AIDS related causes at age thirty-eight.
Writing on his 1990 show at filmmaker and activist K.K. Kean’s loft, Ann Wilson aptly captured the ethos of Ferrando’s work:
“His is an eclectic art of softened realism, poetic abstraction, with romantic erudition. The scale of his work has the intimate quality of chamber music, sequencing images and weaving form and abstraction in light to create resonant duration.”
Thirty-five years later, Ferrando’s “resonant duration” is ever more evident, evoking the timelessness and mastery of the art-historical traditions that so deeply shaped his work.
Between 1973 and 1980, Ferrando (b. Santo Domingo, DR, 1957—d. New York, NY, 1996) studied at the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, the Brooklyn Museum Art School, and with Guillo Pérez at the Escuela de Bellas Artes Santo Domingo. Recent exhibitions include Postcard Palm at EMBAJADA, San Juan, PR (2025), The Queer Show, Part I at Hal Bromm Gallery, New York (2024), and Darrel Ellis & Miguel Ferrando at CANDICE MADEY, New York (2024). Luxe, Calme, Volupté, a group exhibition at CANDICE MADEY in 2023, marked the first presentation of his work in New York since 2000. His work was previously exhibited at the Boston Center for the Arts; Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, New York; Galerie Ziegler, Zurich; National Arts Club, New York; Visual AIDS, New York; and White Columns, New York.
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