VICTOR PAYARES
Victor Payares (b. 1985, Havana) grew up surrounded by layered surfaces-peeling walls, worn facades, the stratified geography of a city that accumulates without erasing. These childhood observations of texture, decay, and persistent beauty inform his practice across oil pastel, acrylic, and mixed media on paper and canvas.
Payares received his BA in Visual Arts from Miami International University of Art & Design (2003–2007), where early work engaged with material transformation and the visual language of overlooked spaces. He went on to study painting at the Royal College of Art, London (2015–2017), where his practice deepened into sustained inquiry into layering, partial revelation, and the structural weight of place. A residency at the Berlin Program for Artists (2019–2021) further developed his engagement with accumulated mark-making and the emotional resonance of worn environments.
(Photo by Mustafah Abdulaziz)
His work has been presented internationally, including Beijing International Art Biennale (The National Art Museum of China, 2010), As pitiless as the storms (Martin Gropius Bau, Berlin, 2021), Positions Part 2 (Alma Pearl Gallery, London, 2023), and A Slice of Landscape (Galerie Anton Janizewski, Berlin, 2023). Solo exhibitions include A Law Slipping Off (Goeben Berlin, 2020), get me to the roof on time (House of Egorn, Berlin, 2019), and ESOL Parcheesi (Roman Road, London, 2017).
In his current practice, Payares works with oil pastel and colored pencil on recycled drawing paper—materials that carry their own history. Each surface he begins with has already lived; he builds upon what remains. Labor without Language (2025) presents a donkey, rendered in accumulated marks, head bowed in the act of feeding. The figure embodies quiet endurance—work that continues without language, without recognition, without choice. This is not metaphor. This is structural condition. The same condition Payares understands from Havana, where survival and labor operate without distinction, and which he now explores across all bodies of work.
Cuba functions in his practice not as declared subject but as internalized logic—the way layering works, the way surfaces hold time, the way nothing fully resolves but everything persists. His paintings build maps of memory and material, each mark responding to the last, creating a visual language rooted in both the personal and the universal.
Victor Payares is presented by Post-American Fine Arts and is based in Berlin.
Victor Payares
-
Victor Payares (b. 1985, Havana, Cuba) lives and works in Berlin. He works across painting, works on paper, and sculpture, building surfaces through accumulation, erasure, and sustained return.
His paintings are dense, architectural constructions — layered records of attention in which space is excavated slowly, where cartography, figuration, and material memory converge without resolution. His works on paper operate with greater immediacy: oil pastel and colored pencil pressed into unstable ground, producing images that are at once impulsive and deeply considered.
Cuba functions in Payares's practice not as subject but as condition — an internalized visual logic shaped by the textures of Havana: its worn facades, stratified walls, and the particular psychological weight of a city that accumulates and withholds in equal measure. Architecture becomes gesture. Surface becomes psychology. The figure appears and recedes within the same moment.
-
2019–2021 — Berlin Program for Artists, Berlin
2015–2017 — MA Painting, Royal College of Art, London
2003–2007 — BA Visual Arts, Miami International University of Art & Design, Miami -
2019–2021 — Berlin Program for Artists, Berlin2022 — Three Works, Three Works, Scarborough, UK
2021 — As pitiless as the storms, BPA at Gropius Studios, Martin Gropius Bau, Berlin
2020 — A Law Slipping Off, Goeben Berlin, Berlin
2019 — get me to the roof on time, House of Egorn, Berlin
2018 — Ring Bell, Aqbar the Space, London
2017 — SUNDAY art fair w/ Johannes Vogt, London
2017 — ESOL Parcheesi, Roman Road, London
2016 — Mi Toronja, Lychee One, London
2013 — UNREAL ESTATE, Vita Rosen, Gothenburg, Sweden
2009 — WALKING ON A DREAM, Lyle O. Reitzel Gallery, Miami
2007 — New Paintings, Lyle O. Reitzel Gallery, Miami
2006 — Above the Clouds, Edge Zones, Miami -
2026 — Basel Social Club: The Office, Post-American Fine Arts, Basel
2026 — Abstraction, Galerie Guido W. Baudach, Berlin
2023 — Positions Part 2, Alma Pearl Gallery, London
2023 — A Slice of Landscape, Galerie Anton Janizewski, Berlin
2022 — The Fairest 01: Open Your Eyes Again, Kühlhaus, Berlin
2022 — What is the Human Being?, Humboldt University, Berlin
2022 — TOTAL RECALL: Learn the Unlearning, Galerie Burster, Berlin
2021 — P.L.U.R., Haus der Statistik, Berlin
2021 — The Fairest Teaser 01, Blake & Vargas, Berlin
2021 — Casa UOVO, Sangt Hipolyt, Berlin
2019 — NOTE to TENANT, Atelier Cecilia, London
2019 — Material art fair w/ Roman Road, Mexico City
2019 — GIFC, Hotel Paris, Berlin
2019 — Get Some Headspace, curated by Juliane Duft, Ralphs, Köln
2018 — Into the Woods, HE.RO Gallery, Amsterdam
2017 — Searching for Magic and The Distorted Image Falling from Your iCloud, The Dot Project, London
2016 — Three Works, Three Works, Weymouth, UK
2014 — STORM STORM, AMO Studios, New York
2012 — 4evr Yung, YOGA Center, Gothenburg, Sweden
2012 — BLACK FOLIAGE, NUDASHANK Gallery, Baltimore
2011 — HOW DID I GET HERE, curated by Angelo Lanza, New York
2011 — TRESPASS, curated by Evan Robarts, Pandemic Gallery, Brooklyn
2010 — Beijing International Art Biennale, The National Art Museum of China, Beijing
2010 — Black & White & Read All Over, NP Contemporary Art Center, New York
2008 — New Painting & Sculpture, curated by Charo Oquet, Edge Zones, Miami
2007 — Calentando la Pista, Wynwood Art District, Miami
2007 — Bringing the New Blood, Lyle O. Reitzel Gallery, Miami
2007 — FAST, Lombardi Property, Miami
2006 — Wild Wild Wynwood, Edge Zones, Miami
2006 — Esperanto, Objex Art Space, Miami
2005 — Ai MIU, Juried Student Exhibition, Best in Show, Miami
2005 — Hot, New, Raw, Fresh, Awesome, Dorsch Gallery, Miami
2005 — Quiet, Objex Art Space, Miami -
Miami International University of Art & Design Full Scholarship, 2003–2007
Berlin Program for Artists Fellowship, 2019–2021
-
The National Art Museum of China, Beijing (Beijing International Art Biennale, 2010)
Martin Gropius Bau, Berlin (BPA at Gropius Studios, 2021)
Humboldt University, Berlin (2022)
Get in touch.
