Fredric Snitzer Gallery is pleased to present Islands, a selection of prints by Rafael Ferrer. This exhibition marks the second iteration of the gallery’s EDITIONS initiative, dedicated to showcasing prints, multiples, and works on paper.
Produced between 1989 and 1993, this group of prints captures the intensity of the Caribbean landscape. Through saturated colors, deep shadow, and expressive figuration, Ferrer renders scenes that feel both painterly and tactile. This work depicts sunset vistas, burning bonfires, and calm waters against lush tropical foliage, evoking moments where light and color heighten the sensory experience of place.
Across this selection, vivid tonal contrasts and radiant hues articulate a vision of the tropics that is immediate and atmospheric, defined by turquoise waters, lush verdant interiors, and palm-fringed coastlines.
Ferrer’s practice is rooted in an exploration of marginal, transitory, and culturally hybrid spaces. Drawing on a wide range of materials, from corrugated tin and paper bags to welded steel and organic forms, his work articulates a visual vocabulary shaped by movement, exchange, and layered histories. His imagery foregrounds both the fragility and resilience of communities navigating complex social and geopolitical conditions, evoking a world defined by fluid borders and intersecting identities.
Fredric Snitzer Gallery, EDITIONS, highlights media that play a vital role in contemporary artistic practice while offering new points of access for collectors and audiences alike.
About Rafael Ferrer
Rafael Ferrer (b. 1933, San Juan, Puerto Rico) is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice moves fluidly across painting, sculpture, assemblage, and installation. Over a career spanning more than six decades, Ferrer has worked both within and beyond key 20th-century movements, including Dada, Surrealism, and Conceptual Art, developing a highly individual visual language that resists categorization. Driven by curiosity and a deep engagement with art history and global cultural narratives, his work reflects an ongoing inquiry into material, form, and meaning.
His work has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions at major institutions including the Philadelphia Museum of Art; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia; and the Museum of Modern Art, New York.
A major retrospective organized by El Museo del Barrio, New York, traveled in 2010. Ferrer has also participated in landmark exhibitions such as Live in Your Head: When Attitudes Become Form at the Kunsthalle Bern, Switzerland and Op Losse Schroeven, at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, Netherlands and has been included in the Whitney Biennial. More recent presentations include Under the Same Sun at the Guggenheim Museum, America Is Hard to See at the Whitney Museum, and Surrealism Beyond Borders at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Tate Modern.
His work is held in leading public and private collections worldwide, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Guggenheim Museum, among many others.
