Miguel Ángel Payano Jr.

Miguel Ángel Payano Jr. (b. 1980, New York, New York; lives and works in the Bronx, New York. MFA Hunter College 2021, New York; MFA Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA), Beijing 2008; BA Williams College 2003.) was born in an Afro-Caribbean family in New York and studied in New England before moving to China in his twenties, Payano has always had to navigate between and among several languages and cultures. Learning to communicate across these contexts, Payano became more and more attuned to the importance of language in our understanding of and relation to one another. Now living and working between New York and Beijing, the mouth-partial and potent-has become an anchoring image in Payano's practice. While earlier in his career Payano worked mostly in paint, in recent years he's expanded his practice to embrace sculptural and quasi-sculptural forms - with his peach-mouths joined by other images, textures, and found, transformed, and assembled objects that form strange human-like portraits that fuse painting and sculpture. Charles Moffett's representation of Payano follows a series of collaborations over the course of the last year, including a solo exhibition in early 2021 and a presentation at NADA Miami 2021.