{"id":11098,"date":"2025-05-26T11:07:15","date_gmt":"2025-05-26T09:07:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/yun-berlin.com\/journal\/?p=11098"},"modified":"2025-08-26T17:13:22","modified_gmt":"2025-08-26T15:13:22","slug":"movement-memory-and-mediation-with-irving-ramo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/yun-berlin.com\/journal\/movement-memory-and-mediation-with-irving-ramo\/","title":{"rendered":"MOVEMENT, MEMORY AND MEDIATION WITH IRVING RAM\u00d3"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tucked inside a nondescript building in Berlin\u2019s Mitte district, above a cluster of medical practices, one might be surprised to find the sun-soaked studio of Irving Ram\u00f3. Once an exhibition space, the rooms now breathe with creative urgency. Large canvases lean against the walls, their surfaces are alive with tension, twisted limbs, theatrical shadows, and vivid colors that veil something darker. The scent of oil paint clings to the air. At the center of it all stands Ram\u00f3 himself, surrounded by fragments of unfinished ideas: drawings, mementos, a tangle of cables from 3D scanning equipment, and a half-sipped coffee.<\/span><\/p>\n

Ram\u00f3 often references the Baroque, not just in style but in spirit.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a term: moto e azione,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s about grabbing movement and emotion at their most vivid. That\u2019s what I want to do.\u201d<\/span><\/h5>\n

Born in Quito, Ecuador, Ram\u00f3 has painted since childhood, though his path to becoming an artist wasn\u2019t linear. \u201cIt was almost too obvious,\u201d he recalls. The idea of being a painter arrived early, but I resisted it.\u201d He initially studied industrial design, drawn to the tension between creativity and functionality. But design could only hold him for so long. His desire to evoke emotion and craft theatrical moments led him to stage design and lighting and eventually back to painting.<\/span><\/p>\n

At one point, on his journey to Europe, visa restrictions pushed him to Istanbul, one of the few countries his Ecuadorian passport allowed him to enter without a visa. \u201cThat alone was a revelation,\u201d he says. \u201cPeople from other South American countries could move freely. I couldn\u2019t. That triggered something bigger: a confrontation with colonial residue, access, and erasure.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

During this time of upheaval, painting became an anchor. Even when he couldn\u2019t physically paint, he collected images and stored references, maintaining the practice in a different form until he could settle again. Irving Ram\u00f3\u2019s work is unmistakable today: baroque, emotionally charged, and rich with layered symbolism.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI use color as a mediator,\u201d he explains. \u201cMy themes are often uncomfortable, power, control, displacement, but the palette makes it digestible.\u201d His creative process is rarely impulsive.<\/span><\/h5>\n

\u201cEverything comes from the research part, followed by a confrontation with the canvas,\u201d he says. \u201cThere\u2019s always a conversation with older works, and then something new emerges.\u201d Sometimes, it begins intuitively, a visual fragment demanding to be painted. Other times, it starts digitally, with a 3D scan modeled and transformed before it ever reaches the canvas. \u201cIt depends,\u201d he shrugs. \u201cBut I\u2019m always in conversation with something else. The work is never isolated.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Berlin has deepened that dialogue, though not without friction. \u201cThe city is demanding,\u201d Ram\u00f3 says. \u201cEvery day is survival, training, contradiction.\u201d He calls Berlin a \u201claboratory of humans,\u201d constant friction of love and fatigue, intensity and intimacy. That energy seeps into the work, its urgency, its theatricality. \u201cThere\u2019s something visceral here,\u201d he adds. \u201cAnd I think my paintings have become more precise and honest, more urgent because of that.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In addition to painting, Ram\u00f3 co-founded the Ventana Project<\/a> with artist Aquiles Jarrin, a curatorial initiative that began almost accidentally from a restaurant window. \u201cThey asked if I wanted to hang my work,\u201d he recalls. \u201cI said no thank you. But I offered to curate others instead.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Ventana reimagines public and everyday spaces, storefronts, and subway stations as accessible contemporary galleries. It showcases emerging local and international artists, fostering spontaneous encounters and dialogue by occupying locations like Rosenthaler Stra\u00dfe, Mehringdamm, Alt-Tempelhof U-Bahn, and most recently, Gesundbrunnen U8-Bahn. Ventana blurs the line between art institutions and urban life, encouraging reflection, community exchange, and unexpected engagement with contemporary work. Ram\u00f3 is excited that the project is now expanding to Madrid. What began informally grew quickly.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe flipped the script,\u201d he says. \u201cWe brought emerging and established artists into public spaces, into the everyday.\u201d He now sees curation as deeply entwined with his practice. Being close to other artists\u2019 work, especially those I admire, shapes me. It influences how I think and how I create. You see how others build their ecosystems, how they wrestle with meaning. <\/span><\/p>\n

That influences how I question my work.\u201d Ventana, he adds, is more than a gallery. \u201cIt\u2019s a way of learning, of being in dialogue. Of building something that extends beyond the self.\u201d<\/span><\/h5>\n

Time is a recurring motif in Ram\u00f3\u2019s work, not just as a theme but as a material. \u201cI work to create an efficient image of the time I am working in whilst also trying to trigger something in the now,\u201d he says. \u201cBut I insist. I repeat. I revisit themes because I think we forget too easily.\u201d His paintings contain historical echoes, power, displacement, and ritual symbols. \u201cWe repeat the same patterns again and again,\u201d he continues. \u201cFrom the caves to now, it\u2019s all cycles. Someone is trying to take someone else\u2019s space.\u201d For Ram\u00f3, painting becomes a form of resistance to that forgetting. \u201cIt\u2019s how I insist. How I remember.\u201d He smiles when asked what he hopes future viewers might take from his work: \u201cTo be a bridge through time.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

As our conversation winds down, Ram\u00f3 reflects on what lies ahead. \u201cWell\u2026 Ventana is expanding. I\u2019m painting again, a new body of work. But mostly, I\u2019m adapting.\u201d If one theme defines his recent years, it\u2019s adaptability. \u201cSince arriving here, I haven\u2019t stopped trying to become the character I wanted to be on this trip,\u201d he reflects. The reality is intense between curating, painting, and navigating systems as a non-EU artist. \u201cBut the unknown, this unstable zone, is where the richest material lives. It teaches you to build new languages. To create anyway.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tucked inside a nondescript building in Berlin\u2019s Mitte district, above a cluster of medical practices, one might be surprised to find the sun-soaked studio of Irving Ram\u00f3. Once an exhibition space, the rooms now breathe with creative urgency. Large canvases lean against the walls, their surfaces are alive with tension, twisted limbs, theatrical shadows, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":11221,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51,3,97,108],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/yun-berlin.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11098"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/yun-berlin.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/yun-berlin.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yun-berlin.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yun-berlin.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11098"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/yun-berlin.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11098\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11250,"href":"https:\/\/yun-berlin.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11098\/revisions\/11250"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yun-berlin.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11221"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/yun-berlin.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11098"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yun-berlin.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11098"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yun-berlin.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11098"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}