Christian Ruiz Berman

"My garden is found

in a starlit maze

and its growing walls are lined

with a morass of superfluous flowers

there are no highways

that cut through the winding groves

of ponderosa and papyrus.

My homeland is a hologram

projected from an onyx eye

and my heart lives on the open palm

of philosophers and pharaohs

there are no easy ways

to thread the thoughts that fall

like a hail of burning arrows.

Two mockingbirds

meet between time and space

and their dainty chrome feet

dance on the dials of power

the grackles of grace

guard the garden gates-

Inside is god giving god to god

animal, icon, and flower"

—Christian Ruiz Berman

No Shortcuts to Aztlan is Christian Ruiz Berman’s first solo exhibition with Nicodim, and his first in Los Angeles. Berman draws from personal histories of migration and adaptation in his intricate paintings. His stylistic influences are wide: perspectives and the mood of Japanese ukiyo-e printing; the direct and tragicomic nature of mariachi ballads and Mexican folklore; and the confrontation of Indigenous, European, and Tibetan Buddhist symbology. He remixes traditions of abstraction, realism, and trompe l’oeil into joyous compositions that teem with color and vitality. He draws from personal backgrounds in graphic design and architecture, his Mexican heritage, and narratives of adaptation and migration to create dynamic packed scenes. These guides support Ruiz Berman’s layered methods of working with abstraction and iconography. His work encourages viewers to examine what is exotic and what is commonplace, what is authentic and what is fabricated.

Christian Ruiz Berman (b. 1982, Mexico City) earned his MFA from RISD in 2018, and currently lives and works in New York. He has completed a number of prestigious artist residencies, including Fountainhead (Miami), the Macedonia Institute (New York), and the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation (Taos) in 2023 alone. Recent exhibitions include Polyreality, Hive Art Center, Beijing (2023); Maternity Leave: None of Women Born, Nicodim and the Green Family Art Foundation, Dallas (2023); Cycles, Dimin Contemporary, New York (2023); Menagerie, Mindy Solomon Gallery, Miami (2022, solo); Hortus Inconclusus, Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City (2022); Unseen Threads, Matha’s Contemporary, Austin (2022); and Juggernaut, The Pit, Los Angeles (2022).