Charlie Quezada

Born in 1986 in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, Quezada earned his BFA from Parsons School of Design in New York. His work centers on collective identity, viewed through the lens of architectural memory.

Charlie Quezada approaches painting with a stripped-down, direct style. His work is shaped by the tension between nature and architecture, often drawing from the tropical landscape of the Dominican Republic. He explores how landscapes are framed and controlled—reflecting on how humans have historically shaped nature to suit their needs.

Quezada’s current practice is rooted in observational research, focusing on construction techniques and materials used across Dominican urban and rural environments. By gathering archival materials and building a photographic library, he studies color, form, and texture to explore how colonial histories have defined the physical and symbolic borders of territory.

Through paintings, installations, and sculptures, Quezada uses both industrial and natural materials from his research sites. These elements allow him to abstract and reinterpret the social and environmental tensions that shape his homeland.

  • Charlie Quezada’s work focuses on understanding collective identity through architectural memory. Currently, his work methodology consists of the observational research of mechanisms and resources, mostly adapted in constructions, that formalizes an intervened panorama. These structures range from cities to rural spaces, pointing out the socio-economic aspects of the Dominican Republic.

    By compiling archival material and a photographic library, the artist develops material, color, and form studies that suggest the physical and conceptual borders demarcating a complex colonial relationship between landscape and territory. Quezada applies in paintings, installations and sculptures industrial and natural components found in research locations, allowing the artist to redefine through abstraction the frictions that disrupt his place of origin.

  • Untitled (perfil_i), 2025

    Acrylic paint, Roll A Tex and polymer on wood and cotton canvas

    This piece incorporates found industrial materials, using compositions of two to three colors to create a sensory experience within the exhibition space through surface and format. While the references emerge from an observational study of Dominican vernacular architecture, this work is primarily an exploration of structural form—focusing specifically on materiality and color. Drawing from a revisitation of minimalist principles from the 1960s, color and texture are approached as ends in themselves. The piece is built through the accumulation of materials that reject any pictorial interpretation; they exist as objects in their own right—static in appearance, yet vulnerable to their surroundings. Rather than aiming for representation, the work engages with form as a concrete reality.

  • Visual reference for Untitled (perfil_i), 2025

  • Untitled (estructura en colapso_ii), 2025

    Latex, Roll A Tex, polyurethane, bayahonda and pvc

    This work exemplifies, both physically and metaphorically, the relationship between balance and force, creating a space for experimentation where an exchange of materials takes place—materials that reference containment technologies commonly found in Dominican vernacular housing.

  • Visual reference for Untitled (estructura en colapso_ii), 2025

  • Visual reference for Untitled (estructura en colapso_ii), 2025