Baker Artist Portfolios

René Treviño (Baltimore, MD) is an interdisciplinary artist working primarily in painting, fibers and installation. He received his BFA in Fine Arts from the School of Visual Arts (SVA) in 2003 and his MFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) in 2005. He has exhibited at the Wadsworth Athenaeum in Hartford, CT; the Baltimore Museum of Art; The Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, MD; White Box in New York, NY; the Delaware Center for Contemporary Art in Wilmington, DE; the Arlington Arts Center in Arlington, VA; and Pentimenti Gallery in Philadelphia, PA.  He was awarded a 2009 Baltimore Creative Fund Individual Artist Grant and won the 2009 Trawick Prize and a 2016 Rubys Artists Project Grant. Additionally, he has been an Artist in Residence at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, MA; AIR Serenbe in Chattahoochee Hills, GA; Creative Alliance in Baltimore, MD; The Studios of Key West in Key West, FL; and the Virginia Center for Creative Arts in Amherst, VA. In 2019 he received a National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Art Works grant in collaboration with the Old Jail Art Center in Albany, TX. Treviño’s first museum survey took place at the Wellin Museum of Art in Clinton, NY in 2024. His work has been featured in the New York Times, Glasstire, Hyperallergic, Art Papers, Washington Blade, Washington Post, Dallas Observer, and ARTnews. Trevino teaches at Towson University and MICA.

Artist Statement
 
History is subjective; there are many blurred lines and so much distortion.  Context and point of view are very important. One person's hero is another person's villain…it depends on who tells the story.  As a gay Mexican-American I am excluded and under-represented by history. My work attempts to make our already complicated history even more complicated. The more layers that I present, the closer I can get to something that might resemble truth. 

I combine imagery from ancient Mexican codices and pre-Hispanic sculptural objects with popular culture references such as NASA space images, Wonder Woman, and Oreo cookies to create a new, queer world that speaks to the future as well as our past. The work is hand-painted/handmade and meticulous, the labor of the work speaks to the generational labor of my Mexican forebearers. 

Throughout my work are themes of identity; I am interested in challenging traditional ideas of race, love, history, and sexuality.  I feel compelled to make thoughtful and beautiful work that confronts societal assumptions and gives new insight into our human experience.  My artwork addresses a personal quest for heroism and bravery as well as a need to define my place in the world.