INTERMedio: A Solo Presentation

September 4 - 27, 2025

Jonathan Carver Moore is thrilled to present INTERMedio, a solo exhibition of oil paintings by Luis Felipe Chávez (b. 1996), on view from September 4 to 27. Through composite images that combine architectural and urban sites from both Mexico and the United States, Chávez explores themes of migration, memory, and the fluid nature of cultural identity.

 

INTERMedio was a project born out of the artist’s journey as an immigrant living in the United States. Raised in a small town in west-central Mexico, Chávez emigrated to the U.S. in 2020, ultimately settling in San Francisco, California. Rather than view these as distinct chapters in his life, the artist seeks to understand how these seemingly disparate places converge both physically and ideologically.

 

As someone straddling two worlds, Chávez identifies points where these cultures inform each other and in turn shape his own identity. In selecting his subjects, the artist looks for “places where I find a connection within my history, celebrating differences and a declaration of migratory resilience. ” The resulting images juxtapose sites of his native and new lands, collapsing them into each other and creating an interim space. “This center describes my relationship in the world and how I perceive it–blending my past and my present."  

 

Upon first glance, the works appear to be photo collages featuring a singular place rather than two different countries painstakingly rendered in oil paint. This blurring of boundaries and borders is seen in Cathedrals, center? authorities? Guadalajara Jalisco, San Jose California (2020), which depicts the Catedral de la Asunción de María Santísima in Centro, Guadalajara and the Cathedral Basilica of St. Joseph in San Jose, California colliding into the artist’s signature overlapping central plane. The merging of these institutions illustrates the shared histories of religion, art, and power between the U.S. and Mexico. The structures reveal not only the similarities between physical spaces, but also of the people who constructed them and those who operate within them. “We are all building the world, while we build ourselves. Space transforms us, and we transform space.”

 

In an age of increasing xenophobia, Chávez responds with a love letter to migration and the intermingling of cultures. Rather than be silenced and made invisible, he invites others to celebrate his position in the INTERMedio. “This intermediate place identifies me and dis-identifies me at the same time. The world doesn't divide, it blends.”

 

Luis Felipe Chávez (b. 1996) is a queer artist originally from a small town in central-western Mexico. His artistic journey began at the age of fourteen with drawing and painting classes in Guadalajara, Jalisco. At eighteen, he made his first visit to the United States. From 2015 to 2020, Chávez pursued a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Visual Arts at the University of Guadalajara. Each summer during those years, he traveled to the U.S. to visit his family—spending time working alongside his father and brother in the agricultural fields of Bakersfield, California, and in factories in Phoenix, Arizona. 

 

In 2020, amid a global atmosphere of uncertainty and loss, Chávez completed his degree and began developing a new body of work. Later that year, driven by a desire for change despite limited English and lingering fears, he packed a few clothes and seven of the paintings from this project into a suitcase and moved with his family to San Jose, California. By the end of 2021, Chávez relocated to San Francisco, where he continues to live and work. Working primarily with traditional drawing and painting techniques, his art explores themes of migration, labor, identity, and belonging through a queer, cross-cultural lens. He seeks to capture the traces of what he feels is real—both physical and symbolic.

 

Chávez centers the human figure in his work, using it as a means to reflect on the broader possibilities of human creation. He sees artistic expression as a way to [re]discover and [re]buildourselves. Transformation and death are recurring concepts in his practice, with death understood not only as biological cessation, but also as a metaphor for change, loss, and the acceptance of impermanence. His work has been exhibited at the San Francisco Art Fair and Intersect Art and Design Palm Springs.