Andrei Renteria ’s “Fringes: Desaparecidx” includes large-scale paintings that resemble the disturbing notes of law enforcement officials documenting crimes. Credit: Courtesy Image / cactusBARN

As its Contemporary Art Month offering, San Antonio’s cactusBARN gallery is presenting two solo exhibitions.

Inside cactusBARN, BLKCK RABBIT (aka Celeste Lindsey) will display “Walk Through the Shadow, Fear No Evil,” while bitti’sGAMBREL hangs Andrei Renteria ’s “Fringes: Desaparecidx.”

A recent graduate, Lindsey works primarily with India ink and cyanotype on paper. Her use of metaphor and abstraction explore themes of a conflicted relationship with the forces of patriarchy that polarize her life.

Renteria, on the other hand, is a peripatetic observer who fictionalizes the atrocities along the U.S.-Mexico border. Acting as a pseudo documentarian,

Renteria’s large-scale paintings imitate the pages of the notepad paper law enforcement officials commonly used at crime scenes, creating life-sized portraits that mimic forensic portraits of kidnappings, physical or sexual assaults and murders that correlate to the very real drug war on the frontera.

Eloquent, beautifully rendered and disturbing, the images speak to a brutal reality fueled by the brevity of desire and demand.

Opening reception 5-8 p.m. Friday, March 7 and free by appointment, cactusBARN, 613 Mission, (210) 872-2364, www.cactusbarn.org.

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This article appears in Mar 5-18, 2025.