Vincent Valdez bears witness to the world around him, chronicling America at the margins. Just a Dream… is the artist’s first major museum survey including work from over twenty years across all media. The exhibition is co-organized by MASS MoCA and the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston (CAMH). The exhibition addresses American politics today, including topics such as boxing, lynchings of Mexican Americans, border walls, politics, greed, the Ku Klux Klan, and the failings and triumphs of society. Accompanying the show will be a bilingual (English/Spanish) catalogue that will be lushly illustrated and will feature a gatefold and a special sewn-in booklet of behind-the-scenes studio images. Texts include a re-print of Joyce Carol Oates’ On Boxing, essays by exhibition curators Denise Markonish (MASS MoCA) and Patricia Restrepo (CAMH); and writing on the artist’s relationship to Texas by MASS MoCA Curator Evan Garza. This exhibition and publication will cement Valdez as one of the most important American painters working today — imaging his country, its people, politics, pride, and foibles.

Vincent Valdez: Just a Dream… is the artist’s first major museum survey and spans over two decades of his work, from early career drawings to current allegorical portraits. Working across painting, video, drawing, sculpture, lithography, and multimedia installation, Valdez deftly addresses the failings and triumphs of contemporary American society with a reverential focus on collective memory and overlooked political histories. Valdez states, “I create images as instruments to probe the past in order to reveal an immediacy to what is occurring today. I am alarmed by the denial of history. I will continue to create counter-images to impede the social amnesia that includes our fateful desire to repeat it.”

Including previously unexhibited and new bodies of work, Just a Dream… is a unique opportunity to see the breadth of Valdez’s practice. The artist often works in series, with this exhibition marking the first time these chapters are in dialogue. Valdez celebrates common people, like his own family members, as empowered, formidable, and present, while challenging traditional and historic symbols of power within contemporary society.

A bilingual book, edited by Denise Markonish and featuring texts by Evan Garza, Markonish, Joyce Carol Oates, and Patricia Restrepo, accompanies the exhibition. It is published by X Artists’ Books and co-published by MASS MoCA and CAMH. Purchase the exhibition catalogue & related editions from the Research & Development Store online here.

Vincent Valdez: Just a Dream… is co-organized by MASS MoCA (Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art) and Contemporary Arts Museum Houston (CAMH). The exhibition is co-curated by Denise Markonish and Patricia Restrepo.

About the Artist:
Vincent Valdez blends large, representational paintings — the scale of which recall Western traditions of history painting as well as mural painting and cinema — with contemporary subject matter. He focuses on subjects that explore his observations and experience of life in the twenty-first century. The results are powerful images of American identity that confront injustice and inequity while imbuing his subjects with empathy and humanity. Valdez states, “My aim is to incite public remembrance and to impede distorted realities that I witness, like the social amnesia that surrounds us all.”

A recipient of the Ford and Mellon Foundations Latinx Artist Fellowship (2022), Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant for Painters and Sculptors (2016), as well as residencies at the Skowhegan School of Painting (2005), the Vermont Studio Center (2011), the Kunstlerhaus Bethania Berlin Residency (2014), and the Arion Press’ King Residency (2023), Valdez currently lives and works between Houston and Los Angeles. Exhibitions and Collections include: The Ford Foundation, The Los Angeles County Museum of Art, MASS MoCA, The Museum of Fine Arts Houston, The Smithsonian Museum of American Art, and The National Portrait Gallery, among others. He lives and works in Houston and Los Angeles.

EXHIBITION TEXTS

Download a PDF of the exhibition gallery guide here.

Vincent Valdez: Just a Dream… is made possible in part by a grant from the Texas Commission on the Arts. Presenting sponsorship is provided by the Henry Luce Foundation, and the Terra Foundation for American Art. Major exhibition support is provided by the Ford Foundation, the Jacques & Natasha Gelman Foundation, and Judy and Charles Tate. Generous support is provided by the National Endowment for the Arts, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Beverly and Howard Robinson, Mid-America Arts Alliance, and the state arts agencies of Arkansas, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, Oklahoma, and Texas. Additional support is provided by Nicole Deller and Matt Bliwise, Lisa Rich and John McLaughlin, Meridee Moore, Weingarten Art Group Fund, and Ric and Tina Whitney. Special thanks to Jon Cooper, Enrico Encarnacion, Janet Flohr, Tessa Ferreyros, Jan Greenberg, Clara Ha, Glenn Ligon, Mary Maas, Anne Parke, and Elizabeth Tenenbaum.

Installation view of Vincent Valdez: Just a Dream…Made with MASS MoCA. As installed in Just a Dream… at MASS MoCA, North Adams, MA (on view beginning May 24, 2025). Photo: Jon Verney