Marcus Venegas
Marcus Venegas (b. 2001, Laredo, TX) is an artist who earned his BFA in Studio Art from The University of Texas at Austin and his MFA from the New York Academy of Art.
Venegas’s work has been featured in Curatory Magazine Volume 7, Artistcloseup Contemporary Art Magazine #29, Modern Renaissance Magazine #31, Visual Art Journal Magazine #24, Friend of the Artist Volume 18, International Art Market Magazine #102, Divide Magazine #13, Artsin Square Magazine #7, Apricity Magazine Spring Edition #6, and Artsin Square personal artbook/interview. His work has also been featured by Beautiful Bizarre and selected as a finalist for the Art Collide Open Theme Summer 2025. His work has additionally been presented on a digital billboard in Times Square, New York.
His exhibition history includes the 39th Annual Chelsea International Fine Arts Competition Exhibition at Agora Gallery, New York (2025); the exclusive exhibition Intimacy at Private Salon of Contemporary Art, New York; the Tribeca Ball Hallway Exhibition, New York (2025, 2026); and the group exhibition Pastime at Plato Gallery, New York (2026). Other exhibitions include Somos Recuerdos (Austin, 2024); By NYC (New York, 2023); Print Extravaganza (Austin, 2023); I’ll Call You Back (Austin, 2023); The Last Minute Show (Austin, 2022); With All the Desperation of a Starving Dog (Austin, 2022); The Armageddon Show (Austin, 2022); and Reimagining Health: Aesthetics of Health, presented at the Health Discovery Building at Dell Medical School and the Visual Arts Center in Austin (2022). His work was also exhibited at the Art and Identity Showcase in the WCP Ballroom, Austin (2023), the #8 Artsin Square Virtual Exhibition (2024), and in the Sinclair Suite at the Texas Union, Austin (2022), in conjunction with Apricity Magazine.
Venegas has received the Tom of Finland Emerging Artist Competition Grand Prize (2026), the Summer Undergraduate Residency Program (SURP) Faculty Award (2026), the Martha & Walter Erlebacher Award (2026), the President’s Scholar Award (2024–2026), the SURP Academy Scholar Award, the Roy Crane Award (Austin, 2022), a Gold Seal Medal in the VASE Competition (San Marcos, 2019), and a Gold Key in the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards (New York, 2019).
He attended the Summer Undergraduate Residency Program at the New York Academy of Art from 2023–2024.
Artist Statement
Marcus Venegas: The Remembering Self
I am a storyteller. As a gay Mexican-American artist, I find myself in a challenging position to share with others the realities of being young and queer, specifically when it comes to romance. Allowing masculinity to submit itself to vulnerability creates an emotional motif that further references the impetuous actions that come with youth while highlighting its impermanence. Through the use of lyrical compositions, I immerse myself in a universe of pictorial poetry and the overall theatrical nature of romance through the fading softness of each piece. Collecting these pieces over time results in building accurate archival documentation of the various experiences that not only shaped me into who I am today but also exemplifies the significance of what a queer man experiences in modern times.