Ricardo Luévanos is a Mexican multidisciplinary artist, born in Guadalajara in 1985, who turns phrases of love, abandonment and pain into physical objects. His Anotaciones works, available at Art of NOMA, are built from fabric, gesso and acrylic and project 20 cm off the wall, so the words read as something carried in the body rather than printed on a surface.
His wider practice moves between acrylic on canvas, risography, ceramics and neon light, with flora, fauna and pastel colour running through all of it. He has shown at the Bass Museum, the Faena Forum and Art Basel Miami, and has worked with fashion and design houses including Ferragamo, Givenchy, Farfetch and Mercedes-Benz. This spotlight looks at what holds that range together, and what a collector is actually taking home with one of the Anotaciones.
A Guadalajara artist who refuses one medium
Most artists are introduced by their medium: a painter, a photographer, a sculptor. Luévanos does not fit that sentence. His artist page describes a multidisciplinary, mixed-media practice grounded in digital technique, and his collection notes list four quite different ways of working: acrylic on canvas, risography, ceramics and neon light. Each one brings a different temperature to the same set of ideas.
Risography is a print process with a soft, slightly grainy finish and colours that sit on the paper like ink rather than toner. Ceramics adds weight and permanence. Neon does the opposite, turning a line into light that only exists while the current runs. Moving between them lets Luévanos test how a phrase or an image changes when it is printed, fired, painted or lit.
For a collector, that range is useful context. It means a single work is one chapter in a larger body of experiments, and it explains why his pieces can feel graphic and handmade at the same time. The digital starting point shows in the clean colour; the hand shows in everything that happens after.
Birds, flocks and swarms in pastel and neon
The imagery that runs through his work comes from the natural world. Flora and fauna recur across the mediums, and his collection notes single out one motif in particular: birds and flocks that transform into swarms. It is a simple image with an unsettling edge. A flock suggests movement and freedom; a swarm suggests pressure, something that gathers and closes in.
Luévanos renders that shift in pastel tones and luminous neon. Pastels usually signal softness, even sweetness, and neon belongs to signage and nightlife. Putting a darker idea inside those colours is part of how the work operates. The surface invites you in before the meaning lands.
That tension between a gentle palette and heavier content is the clearest thread in his practice. It is also what connects the nature imagery to the text-based Anotaciones, where the colours stay light while the words carry the weight.
What are the Anotaciones works about?
Anotaciones means “notations”, and the series treats painting as a kind of note-taking. The gallery’s description puts it plainly: the surface is inscribed rather than declared. These are not slogans shouted at the viewer. They read more like lines written down to remember a feeling, records of emotional states held quietly beneath the surface.
The two works currently available at Art of NOMA make the idea concrete. Anotaciones (Between My Ribs) places its subject beneath the surface, something protected yet exposed. Hand-lettered words move down a white ground, the colour drifting from red through pink and violet into blue, with the phrase “somewhere between my ribs” at its centre. Anotaciones (Some Days) takes its subtitle from the variability of daily feeling: moments that pass without resolution but leave a trace.
The titles matter here. They work as the first line of the note, telling you where to look and how close to stand. In both cases the subject is something private, love, absence, an ordinary bad day, recorded in a form that is meant to be lived with rather than glanced at.
Fabric, gesso and acrylic: how the surface is built
Each Anotaciones work is made from three materials, and the gallery notes explain what each one does. Fabric brings softness and tension. Gesso builds texture and relief. Acrylic paint supplies the colour structure and the gesture of the hand-lettered text. The fabric is pulled and folded across a wooden frame, so the surface looks creased and lifted, closer to cloth that has been held than to a stretched canvas.
The result reads as both bodily and architectural. Bodily, because the folds suggest skin, breath and the ribs named in one of the titles. Architectural, because the work is a built object with real depth. Both pieces measure 150 × 110 cm and stand 20 cm off the wall, which means they cast shadows and change as the light moves around the room.
That depth changes how you hang them. A 20 cm projection behaves more like a shallow relief than a painting, so side light will deepen the folds and flat front light will soften them. Our guide on how to frame, light and hang original art covers the basics, and the work needs a solid fixing into the wall rather than a single picture hook.
Why does an edition of three matter to collectors?
Both Anotaciones works are produced as a limited edition of three, and editions 2 and 3 of each are currently available. Each comes mounted on its wooden frame with a certificate of authenticity. For a handmade fabric-and-gesso object, an edition of three is a very small run. Every example is made by hand, so the folds and lettering will not be mechanically identical from one to the next.
A small, documented edition sits between a unique original and an open print run. You know exactly how many exist, and the certificate records which number you own. If the difference between those categories is new to you, our guide to prints, editions and originals explains how each is made and documented, and our note on what a certificate of authenticity means covers what to keep with the work.
The practical point is simple: with only two editions of each piece on offer, availability can change quickly. The work pages on the site show live status, so check there before planning a wall around one.
Living with a large text-based work
At 150 × 110 cm, an Anotaciones piece is a statement work. It will anchor a living room wall, a long hallway or the space above a console, and it needs room on either side so the folds and the colour gradient can be read from a few steps back. Our guide on choosing the right size art for your wall walks through the proportions.
Text-based art also asks a question that abstract work does not: will you still want to read these words every day? With Luévanos the answer tends to be yes, because the phrases are personal rather than clever. They read like a line from a letter, and the soft colours keep them from feeling heavy in a home.
If you are building a collection around Mexican artists, his work pairs naturally with figurative and pop-surrealist painting that shares a light palette and a serious undertone, such as Mónica Loya’s pop surrealism. For a wider view, start with our starting point for collecting Mexican contemporary art, or see every available piece on the Ricardo Luévanos artist page.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who is Ricardo Luévanos?
Ricardo Luévanos is a Mexican multidisciplinary artist born in Guadalajara in 1985. He works across acrylic on canvas, risography, ceramics and neon light, and has exhibited at the Bass Museum, the Faena Forum and Art Basel Miami.
What are the Anotaciones works made of?
Each Anotaciones work is made from fabric, gesso and acrylic paint on a wooden frame. Fabric adds softness and tension, gesso builds relief, and acrylic supplies colour and gesture. The pieces measure 150 × 110 × 20 cm.
Are the Anotaciones works unique or editions?
They are produced as a limited edition of three. Editions 2 and 3 of each work are currently available at Art of NOMA, and each comes mounted on its wooden frame with a certificate of authenticity.
Which brands has Ricardo Luévanos collaborated with?
He has collaborated with fashion and design houses including Ferragamo, Givenchy, Farfetch and Mercedes-Benz, alongside his gallery and museum exhibitions.
