Ritual
Migration
David Klein Gallery
June 5 – July 11, 2026
The new series of paintings, comprising over twelve pieces, titled ‘Ritual Migration‘, examines themes of migration, memory, ritual, and belonging through complex narratives inspired by Caribbean histories and the symbolism of the sea. The work reflects on movement across both physical and spiritual landscapes while honoring the rituals and histories transmitted across generations and oceans.
Through painting, I hope to honor rituals carried across generations and oceans. Rituals that connect people to land, water, ancestry, and community. – Christian Curiel, 2026
Ritual Migration reflects on personal and history, myth, ritual, and lived experience, honoring those who cross physical and spiritual seas in search of refuge, identity, and new beginnings. Christian Curiel 2026
Even the painting process mirrors this structure, employing techniques of a painterly “in-between” through which dreamlike images develop gradually across layered surfaces. Working primarily in oil on linen, Curiel allows the surface to remain visible, letting it function as atmosphere, skin tone, or mid-tone within the composition. An image is built around the natural color of the linen, so that figures seem to surface from within it. Curiel experiments with water poured into acrylic layers that are laid flat on the ground. Where the water accumulates, the paint cannot dry. When the water is later wiped away, it leaves organic marks that resemble droplets or erosion patterns.
In the larger triptychs Ritual Migration and Crash Boat, figures appear in and around the sea and seashore, in inner tubes, makeshift vessels, and improvised crafts, portraying a loose, unresolved narrative in which the sea becomes a metaphor for passage and a psychological and historical space shaped by urgency, danger, endurance, and survival. Within these scenes subtle details begin to surface-plastic debris, fragments of discarded objects or belongings, pointing to environmental, psychological, and ritual undercurrents; offerings of food, suggesting moments of preparation or ritual; and playing cards divining some unknown, alternative, future.
– Wayne Northcross, 2026
– Wayne Northcross, 2026
