In his artistic practice, Eamon Ore-Giron combines references to architecture, celestial cartographies, textile traditions, writing systems, and art histories that span geographies and timelines. Through vivid color and geometric form, his work expands the language of abstraction into a site where multiple histories, temporalities, and perspectives converge. His paintings and sculptural work reference Brazilian Neo-Concretism, Italian Futurism, Russian Suprematism, and the designs of Incan jewelry and pre-Columbian Paracas textiles. By bringing Indigenous, Latin American, and European aesthetic traditions into dialogue, Ore-Giron challenges the notion of a linear art-historical canon, instead proposing a shared heritage of forms. 

His Black Medallion XIII (Variation I) is the first mosaic work in Ore-Giron’s ongoing Black Medallion series (2021–present), which interrogates systems of value that have shaped histories of extraction, the movement of materials, and the flow of capital across the globe. This series serves as a counterpart to his Infinite Regress series, which examined the ceremonial and cultural value ascribed to gold—a precious material long associated with colonial expansion and extraction in South America. While listening to De La Soul’s 1989 song “Buddy,” Ore-Giron was struck by the lyric, “Black medallions, no gold.” The suggestion to replace gold—a symbol of wealth and power—with an emblem that honors cultures and values beyond dominant structures resonated deeply with the artist. 

Through the Black Medallion series, Ore-Giron proposes an alternative system of value that centers the color black—and blackness itself—in place of gold. In his own words, Ore-Giron asks, “What are the implications and possibilities of making that shift, even on an aesthetic level?” This invitation to reconsider value is echoed in the work’s engagement with the lineage of the color black in the art history of abstraction. Against a dark horizon evocative of the night sky, a constellation of energized geometric forms radiates outward, while the dynamic interplay of contrast, pattern, and repetition imbues the composition with a palpable sense of vitality. 

About the artist

Eamon Ore-Giron (b. 1973, Tucson, Arizona) received his MFA from the University of California, Los Angeles, and BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute. He has presented his work in solo exhibitions at The Contemporary Austin; Museum of Contemporary Art Denver; and the Anderson Collection at Stanford University. His work is in the permanent collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; and the Phoenix Museum of Art.