Architects of Absence

Gallery Wendi Norris

436 Jackson Street, San Francisco

Opening reception

Thursday, July 16, 5 – 7 PM

Gallery Wendi Norris is proud to present Architects of Absence, a generation-spanning exhibition pairing paintings and works on paper by Surrealist masters Remedios Varo and Marcel Jean with new works by Dabin Ahn, Selva Aparicio, and Yaxkin Fuentes-Barrientos.

Spanning distinct eras, mediums, and geographies, these five artists are united by a shared project: navigating the voids that shape existence. Whether investigating the psychic, mythic, and alchemical realms of the imagination, documenting the material remnants of industrial and biological change, or harnessing loss and memory into resonant forms, their works map the absences that define reality.

A highlight is Aprendiz de Ícaro (1959), a luminous and exquisitely detailed mixed media work on bristol board by Remedios Varo (1908, Anglès, Spain – 1963, Mexico City, Mexico). Drawing inspiration from Greek mythology and the Old Masters—evoking Leonardo da Vinci’s aerial designs and Francisco Goya’s airborne figures—Varo depicts Icarus’s apprentice trapped within a crumbling alleyway. The fateful scene captures the apprentice gliding toward a candle flame, a manifestation of the mythic void and the fragile threshold between aspiration and ruin.

Paintings by Marcel Jean (1900, Charité-sur-Loire, France – 1993, Louveciennes, France) and new works by Selva Aparicio (b. 1987, Barcelona, Spain) further this investigation into material transformation. As a technically inventive member of the Surrealist circle, Jean pioneered flottage, a technique where diluted oil paint is floated on water and captured on paper. In the paintings on view, the artist creates evocative, abstract topographies that suggest the emergence of forms from an alchemical void.

Aparicio anchors this exploration in the physical realm, creating work that carries the memory of the living. Using original clay roof tiles from the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Martin House in Buffalo, NY, Aparicio carved by hand the impressions of oak leaves pressing themselves into the substrate. Here, the roof serves as a site of convergence for memory, architecture, and the natural world, documenting how bodies and histories settle into one another and leave distinct traces of their presence.

The works of Dabin Ahn (b. 1988, Seoul, South Korea) and Yaxkin Fuentes-Barrientos (b. 2001, San Jose, CA) explore different dimensions of loss—one personal and intimate, the other industrial and historical. Ahn’s new body of work, produced during a period of bereavement, questions what it means to hold time. He constructs his own frames and panels, shaping them beyond the canvas edge, and in one work integrates footage of flickering flames directly into the canvas, marking the composition with both continuity and grief. The remaining paintings of candles and bodies suspended in deep nocturnal light share this elegiac quality.

Fuentes-Barrientos draws from the industrial residue of Northern California, exploring decommissioned factories and buried histories. His subjects include an ancient lime kiln in Colfax, CA, recently uncovered by a wildfire; a decommissioned commercial kiln in Lincoln, CA; and the dilapidating cooling towers of the Rancho Seco Nuclear Generating Station outside Sacramento, CA—structures that remain standing despite their operational obsolescence. These forms exist in a perpetual state of becoming, echoing a history that is physically present yet functionally absent. Drawing on his background in architectural drafting, Fuentes-Barrientos reveals the profound resonance of these incomplete transitions.

About the artists

Remedios Varo (1908, Anglès, Spain – 1963, Mexico City, Mexico) studied at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando in Madrid before joining the Surrealist avant-garde in Barcelona and Paris, where her work was exhibited at MoMA's landmark Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism in 1936. Fleeing occupied France in 1941, she settled in Mexico City, where she developed her mature style—meticulous, visionary paintings that fuse scientific precision with esoteric and feminist subject matter—alongside fellow exiles Leonora Carrington, Alice Rahon, and Gordon Onslow Ford. Her first major solo exhibition in Mexico City in 1956 catapulted her to the forefront of the art scene. She died suddenly in 1963 at 54, leaving roughly 400 works, over half of them drawings.

Her work is held by the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Art Institute of Chicago; Centre Pompidou, Paris; and the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C., among others. Gallery Wendi Norris has represented Varo's work since 2004 and is the only gallery to have presented solo exhibitions of the artist since her death. In fall 2026, the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark will stage the first ever major solo museum exhibition in Europe dedicated to her work.

Marcel Jean (1900, Charité-sur-Loire, France – 1993, Louveciennes, France) studied at the École Nationale des Arts Décoratifs in Paris before becoming a central figure of the Surrealist movement in 1932. He participated in the landmark Fantastic Art, Dada and Surrealism at MoMA in 1936, and went on to exhibit in every major International Surrealism exhibition throughout the history of the movement. Beyond his studio practice—which encompassed painting, collage, drawing, and sculpture—Jean was a preeminent Surrealist scholar, authoring the definitive History of Surrealist Painting (1959) and editing the Autobiography of Surrealism (1980). His work is held by the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; and the Art Institute of Chicago, among others.

Dabin Ahn (b. 1988, Seoul, South Korea) creates paintings populated by flora, fauna, vessels, candles, and ceramic fragments, motifs that function as representations of the self. Ahn’s works also incorporate videos and sculptural elements such as hand-built frames that part to reveal images along the canvas edge. Light plays a central role in the artist’s lexicon, suggesting an illuminating presence even when its source is hidden. These elements collectively blur the boundaries between the material and the imagined, evoking an emotional depth reflective of the human experience.

Ahn received a BFA and MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Selected solo exhibitions include Document, Chicago; François Ghebaly, Los Angeles; OCHI, Los Angeles; Harper’s, New York. Recent group exhibitions include Make Room, Los Angeles; Harper’s, East Hampton; and The Hole, Los Angeles. His work can be found in the permanent collections of the Denver Art Museum, Denver and the High Museum, Atlanta. Ahn lives and works in Chicago, IL.

Selva Aparicio (b. 1987, Barcelona, Spain) examines the boundaries between mourning and materiality, intimacy and decay. Her practice transforms overlooked materials—cemetery flowers, cicada wings, human hair—into works that hold space for grief, memory, and rebirth.

Aparicio’s recent and forthcoming solo exhibitions include presentations at Pioneer Works, Brooklyn, NY (2027); Gallery Wendi Norris, San Francisco, CA (2025 – 26); and DePaul Art Museum, Chicago, IL (2024). She completed a permanent public commission, At Rest, for the 2024 Beaufort Triennial in Belgium, and is featured in the inaugural 2026 edition of the Medina Triennial in Medina, NY.

Aparicio, whose awards include the 2025 Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise in Visual Arts, holds a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and an MFA in Sculpture from Yale University. She studied sculpture at Escola Massana in Barcelona and is currently Assistant Professor of Sculpture at Alfred University in Alfred, NY.

Yaxkin Fuentes-Barrientos (b. 2001, San Jose, CA) works across painting and drawing to investigate place, myth, and the ambiguity of collective memory. Trained in architectural drafting, his practice draws on the rugged landscapes and underground residues of Northern California—the mines, quarries, caves, and logging roads he explores, and the folk tales and buried histories that surround them. Fuentes-Barrientos received his BFA in painting and drawing from the California College of the Arts, San Francisco, CA, in 2023, and lives and works in San Francisco.