What shapes you? Not what you inherited — what you choose to let in.
This May, CortesNYC opens the studio doors for Influence 26, a two-day open studio experience rooted in a singular, urgent idea: in a world that never stops broadcasting, the most radical act is choosing what you actually absorb.
We live in an era of manufactured influence. Algorithms decide what you see. Platforms loop the same fears, the same aesthetics, the same noise: packaged as culture. Cortes has been watching this happen. As a Gen X artist shaped by the streets of Queens, he's felt the tension between what it meant to be authentic then and what gets called authentic now.
"Being a product of your environment was once seen as authentic. Today that environment is heavily distorted — what we experience is no longer purely lived. It's filtered, repeated, and manipulated." — CortesNYC
Influence 26 is his answer. Not a retreat from the chaos, but a conscious pushback against it. The work in this show interrogates the recycled narratives of our moment; nuclear anxiety, censorship, global conflict, the erosion of rights; not as new stories, but as warnings that were never fully heeded the first time around.
And running alongside all of it: the rise of AI. The meme wars. The speed at which ideas mutate and disappear. Cortes uses this moment to ask what it means to make something by hand, to leave a human mark, to be intentional in a space that rewards reaction over reflection.
His graffiti roots are present in every piece — the letterforms, the spray, the physical commitment to the canvas — but this body of work looks forward. It says: I can't control what surrounds me, but I can control what I let define my work.
"In 2026, I recognize that I cannot control the world around me, but I can control what I allow to influence me — and that choice defines everything I create." — CortesNYC
Come see the work. Talk to the artist. Be inside the studio where these decisions were made — on canvas, on paper, in the wall.
Saturday & Sunday, May 16 & 17, 2026
12:00 PM – 6:00 PM, both days
43-01 22nd St, Studio #109, Long Island City, NY 11101
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