Betsabee Romero

Mexico, 1963

BiographyBorn in Mexico in 1963, she mixes folk, Pop and modernist elements.

ART IN REVIEW; Betsabee Romero
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By KEN JOHNSON
Published: July 28, 2000
Valdirlei Dias Nunes
Ramis Barquet
41 East 57th Street
Manhattan
Through Sept. 2
Betsabee Romero is into cars. An interesting but somewhat unfocused appropriator born in Mexico in 1963, she mixes folk, Pop and modernist elements. In her first New York solo show, she presents religious narratives painted on automobile hoods and a wall-scale composition of emblematic canvases arranged in a grid matching that of downtown Mexico City with little toy cars running in the lanes between pictures.
Ms. Romero's most persuasive works, however, are sculptural. One is a funky, reconstructed vintage Volkswagen with parts of its body replaced by straw, corrugated plastic roofing or wood paneling. Thus the ''Beetle,'' one of Mexico's most popular cars, is transformed from a piece of modern machinery to a work of folk assemblage. ''Underground,'' a part-Minimalist, part-Surrealist installation, has the shape of a car roof pushing up under a gallery floor completely covered in wood veneer. This deadpan Magritte-style work looks as if it might be headed in a good direction.

In this gallery's small viewing room, Valdirlei Dias Nunes, a Brazilian painter, is also having a first New York show. Mr. Nunes is not a bit unfocused in his exploration of illusionism and geometric abstraction. Each of his white, breadbox-size canvases bears a variation of a boxy, imaginary Minimalist structure rising up from the picture's lower edge. Painted with deft trompe l'oeil realism, permutations of wood-grained slabs and slender sticks generate a modest yet complex, and oddly mysterious, playfulness. KEN JOHNSON

Born in Mexico city in 1963.
Studies Fine Arts and History of Arts in Paris, France, and Mexico City.

Has more than 40 individual exhibitions all over the world such as:
- Road Show, at Ramis Barquet Gallery, New York
- On the Freeway, at The Drill Hall Gallery, Canberra Australia.
- Lagrimas Negras (Black Tears) at the Amparo Museum, Puebla; Museum of Contemporary Art, Monterrey and San Ildefonso, Mexico City.

She also made plenty of Urban Interventions, working with locals comunities such as in East L.A., Colonia Buenos Aires in Mexico City; Idaho; Chicago; Toulouse, France;

She also participate in many Group Exhibitions and Biennals:
- InSite 97 en México-Tijuana,
- Art Grandeur Nature, La Courneuve Paris,
- Cinco Continentes D.F.,
- Habana Biennal 2004, Cuba.
- Portoalegre Biennal, Brasil, 2004
- Poligraphic Trienal de San Juan Puerto Rico 2004,
- Eco, Arte Contemporáneo Mexicano Museo Reyna Sofía

You can find her work in many important collections :
- Jacques et Natasha Gelman Collection ,
- Daros Collection, Switzerland
- LACMA L.A.USA,
- Museum of Modern Art of Houston,

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