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“Sweet baby Jesus, ohhhhohoho, oh sweet baby Jesuhs, we made it in America.” – Frank Ocean
Song Made in America album Watch The Throne, August 8, 2011
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Tripoli Gallery is delighted to present Rising Tides, a group exhibition featuring paintings by Félix Bonilla Gerena, Iván Girona, and Melanie Luna. Opening with a reception for the artists on Saturday, November 1, from 5 – 7pm, Rising Tides will be on view at Tripoli Gallery in Wainscott New York from October 24th through November 24th, 2025.
Art is a revolution, and imagination is a sacred gift. In a time where the agenda of separation feels prominent, we look to the artists whose work reclaims that ancient impulse and calls to question falling apathetically into narratives that have already been written. As we evolve, we look to all our ancestors; to their markings on cave walls, their painted narrations on ceramics and scenes sewn into tapestries and unearthed in Central and South America. To visual iterations of baby Jesus, painted on canvas and church ceilings, commissioned by the elite, preserved and promoted in Europe. From the mythical stories spoken and past down from the elders to the children across the globe to narrations inscribed in The Bible and proselytize internationally, we understand that the spoken narrative become that much more impactful with imageries associated to them. We retrace our steps to the beginning to realize and remember how close we all are.
Rising Tides brings together three painters from two of USA’s neighboring islands, Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic. With two polarized ideological relationships to our country and perspectives from 60’s, 70’s and 90’s, we look at the continuities in medium and commitment to creating their own worlds. The rhythmic figurative paintings of Felix Bonilla Gerena show plumptious island characters frolicking in the lush beach scenes of his homeland. Ivan Girona’s surrealistic and abstract land/moon/underwater/scape’s are seemingly from another physical dimension where time bends and new geographies emerge. And Melanie Luna’s portraits of humanity, draw inspiration from her ancient female cave painting ancestors and hyperrealist 21st Century painters, as she reassembles our concepts of history by stripping a narrative down to its bones, leaving viewers left to put their own story back together. Her theory is that cave paintings were more likely done by females, at home mothering the children, taking care of dwellings, gossiping, etc., while men were most likely out hunting, protecting, and fighting.
While some stories of our origin have been washed away, Rising Tides investigates taking the power of narratives back and claiming them. Sharing a Sea with these three artists, Tripoli Patterson, with a perspective from the 80’s and whose father’s birth town was the Caribbean shore of Costa Rica, reflects, “Here we celebrate artists who tap into their subconscious beings, connecting to all, past, present and future, like mycelium. Demonstrating how narratives can come from within, escaping those being imposed on us by emperors, religions or governments,” he states. “I’m excited to learn from, and be inspired by, artists with the ability to act as vessels, accessing an intelligence not written in American History textbooks, retrieving what is hidden as they unbiasedly offer glimpses of a new narrative which reimagines identities and advocates that pure possibility is in all of our hands”.
Félix Bonilla Gerena (b. 1968, Utuado, Puerto Rico) earned his BA from the School of Plastic Arts at the University of Puerto Rico in 1992 and went on to study at the San Carlos University of Mexico and at the Autonomous University of Caracas, Venezuela. His paintings have been exhibited extensively throughout Puerto Rico, internationally at the Museum of the Americas in Miami and the Museo de las Casas Reales in the Dominican Republic, and in group shows in Philadelphia and Guadalupe, Mexico. Bonilla Gerena’s work is included in many international private collections, as well as in the permanent collections of the Museo de Arte Moderno in the Dominican Republic and the Museo de Arte Historia de Arecibo, Puerto Rico. With five solo exhibitions and one residency with Tripoli Gallery, this will mark his inclusion in 13 group exhibitions.
Ivan Girona (b. 1977, Utuado, Puerto Rico) is an artist whose work spans drawing and painting, influenced by his diverse experiences living in Texas, Germany, Washington, and Puerto Rico. He graduated from Central High School in 1995 with a focus on illustration, fashion design, and architectural design before continuing his studies in visual arts and communications at the University of the Sacred Heart. In 2014, Girona began teaching Experimental Painting at the Art League of San Juan, later expanding his teaching to include painting and drawing at Fundación Casa Cortés in 2015, alongside Vanessa Rivera. Over the years, Girona has exhibited both individually and in group shows, with notable exhibitions such as Ivan Girona Solo and Dibujo Inventado. His work is characterized by a dynamic exploration of both traditional and innovative approaches to drawing and painting.
Melanie Luna (b. 1997, Santiago, Dominican Republic) relocated to New York in her early years, and has lived the majority of her young adult life in the Bronx, NY. She currently lives and works in Brooklyn, focusing on creating images that bear witness to the plight of the human experience, which has rapidly amplified over the course of the artist’s existence. Melanie earned her BFA at Pratt University, and is also a Yale Norfolk graduate. Luna presented her first solo exhibition at TU AMOR FUEGO, Puerto Rico, in 2021. She was featured in the group show Hereditary, curated by Emmanuel Massillon, A Land of All Possibles at Trotter & Scholer, and The Cowboys Made Me Cry at Swivel Saugerties. Luna has been working with the Tripoli Gallery since 2022.
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