From a review in the catalogue Boxes and Inventions, exhibition at A.D.A. Gallery in Richmond, 2007:
“His imagery is, in a word, unexpected … Chiriboga frequently forces confrontation by squeezing an abundance of convoluted and layered meanings into a very tight place. The close quarters of a cigar box requires a precise and elegant endgame to resolve itself perfectly. These limits are calculated: the rigor of a confined space demands penetrating thought and cunning craftsmanship that large, empty expanses simply do not proffer.”
– David Burton, Virginia Commonwealth University
From BroadStrokes, Vol. 1 (Oct. 2003): http://www.art6.org
“Chiriboga’s paintings seem rich psychic tableaus that don’t easily leave the mind … much in the Spanish tradition, many of his paintings have a sort of picaresque landscape of the mind and Quixotean expansiveness to them … There is a similarity in the way Chiriboga marries paradoxical or antithetical feelings of glee and menace, sereness or isolation with an oppressive or palpable presence (even perversity) much in the manner of Balthus, Brueghel or Bacon … His bravura sculpture, with its savagely mordant rhetoric and wit, creative “unconvention,” and a sometimes unusual and jarring juxtaposition of seemingly incongruous objects, is much in the vein of Robert Rauschenberg — with both artists elevating truculence and naturalism to the sardonically strange and gently piquant and sublime.”
Additional commentary in Cause for Celebración, a review of the show “Celebración de las Artes Latinas” at Artspace Gallery in 2003, can be found at http://www.artZites.com
From The Next Big Thing in Style Magazine, March 2000:
“… Frederick Chiriboga … most fits the description of a virtually undiscovered artist who might potentially turn out to be the Next Big Thing. He is a maverick — a radical personality who also makes fascinating, difficult, eccentric and satisfying objects — lots of them. … In his dark idiosyncratic sculptures … he has created something new that is curiously mystical, humorous and horrifying … Chiriboga’s aesthetic is decidedly European in style, being physically sensuous and erotic, and intrigued by the subliminal.”
– Deborah McCleod
From the catalogue Touch: Beyond the Visual, for the Hand Workshop exhibition in Richmond, Jan. 1993:
“In his work Chiriboga uses wry cynicism directed at dogma of all kinds … he repositions the questions about the priority of conceptual, sensual, visual, and tactile properties in art. … Chiriboga’s work often charms the viewer before it delivers the punch.”
From Punchline, review of the show “Religion” at Aquiles Adler Gallery, Sep. 2002:
“… his slightly askew, humorous and autobiogrphical paintings are worth a look. … I like this show. It oils the brain’s wheels and prompts both laughter and anguish.”
From Punchline, review of the exhibition “Sculpture” at Aquiles Adler Gallery, Jan. 2000:
“… .the found objects Chiriboga uses in his pieces don’t bespeak the expected … they leave the viewer feeling like an archaeologist uncovering relics from a yet to be discovered tribe.
Frederick Chiriboga 