The art of Lander Rodríguez
By Margaret Failoni, Curator May 26, 2006

Living in San Miguel de Allende since 2003, Lander Rodríguez divides his time and efforts between ever-growing demands for graphic design and creating art with photography.

He has worked on design projects for television and the printed page both in Europe and Mexico while supporting his main objective, photo art.

Rodríguez's art emerges from three main sources: surrealism, the art of nature itself and the poetics of technique pushed to its limits. Exact, naturalistic representation is not his artistic goal; rather, he searches for what he can do to create a dramatic, brilliantly colored and idealized view. The magic of his particular vision is revealed, for example, in his close-ups of trees, in which he focuses on the precise perspective and topographic features that give the photo, or picture, its pictorial potential. His finished coloring may not retain the vivacity and sense of moment of the more rapid beach scenes, but they are remarkable as jewels of observation and nostalgia, capturing the pleasures and the poetry of familiar lands.

More often than not, Rodríguez finishes his images using his computer's mouse as a paintbrush, adjusting the light and color, and carefully experimenting with paper, choosing it according to the desired pictorial surface, so as to bring forth a particular element in the overall composition. 

In the large organos photo, a cross section of geological strata is seen simultaneously from the bottom up, filling most of the picture's surface. Allowing the shapes of branches to serve as a conceptual and literally physical guide, these painterly images are technically and artistically inventive. For Rodríguez, this is a way of manipulating the arbitrary creations of nature in favor of a technique imitating the efforts of a geological process, a game to play. In this way, the artist celebrates the origins of art in terms of myths and chance events in nature.

Born in Mexico City in 1960, Lander Rodríguez is a graduate of the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana with a specialization in Design and Communications. He also studied art at the San Carlos School under the maestro Aceves Navarro.
Rodríguez has had a successful career in graphic design in Madrid and Mexico City, working with major agencies as well as founding his own company, Firma Corporativa, S.C., and cofounding Neografia, S.C.

Photographs by Lander Rodríguez
Saturday, May 27, 5-8pm
Generator Gallery 
Fábrica Aurora



The baroque world of Angel Ricardo Ríos
By Margaret Failoni, Curator

To date, prolific painter/sculptor Angel Ricardo Ríos has shown his work in 25 one-person exhibitions and in over 30 group shows in Mexico, Spain, Costa Rica, the United States and Cuba. He has been honored with several prestigious international awards, and his work can be found in numerous public collections in Cuba, Mexico and the US.

A critic titled a 2002 essay based on an exhibition of Ríos's work "The Pleasure of Excess" and referred to another essay concerning the artist titled "The Baroque and Neo Baroque." Both articles point to the Baroque style of Ríos's work, which focuses on excess and the ephemeral. I would like to add another label: architectural. 

During the Renaissance, the scholars of the time considered architecture the highest form of art, since it embraces form, color and style. Without a doubt, Ríos's work is architecturally constructed imagery of Baroque excess. He paints Greek columns made of sensuous, quivering and bulging cushions, some with Corinthian capitals. Some paintings depict smokestacks billowing cushions, chairs and settees that have cushions growing from the seat or over the sides. Tents covering more luscious, striped cushions and flowerpots burst with cushiony growths. On one occasion, for the opening of a Mexico City exhibit, the artist designed a wide plinth with a large, red-and-white-striped cushion that turned out to be a bulging, creamy cake to be devoured by the onlookers.
The artists' sculptures seem to be paintings that have jumped from the canvas onto the floor, to be metamorphosed into three-dimensional, surreal furniture/objects with references to classical motifs and the ever-present striped cushions, albeit on classical bases or sprouting from chests of drawers, armoires or little houses.

Much like Claes Oldenberg's use of soft materials to create outsized objects of humble, daily use, Rios adds a generous dose of surrealism-totally irrational, nonfunctional, Baroque and totally pleasurable-to the heady and ephemeral mix.
Ríos uses liquefied oil paints to achieve watercolor-like effects. It is with this swiftly conceived and executed watercolor technique that the artist paints most spontaneously, as a true expressionist. He is resigned to the fact that harmony means sacrifice of natural phenomena in favor of relationships established by pure color. These architecturally conceived cushions are only the pretext for liquid-fresh strokes over equally free and fluid charcoal drawing. As the strokes move across the canvas, the purposely off-centered focal point of the composition does not serve as an illusionist light source, but rather as a painterly focal point emphasizing the essential abstract composition. In these paintings the objects are subordinate to the study of an architectural composition that is rendered with naturalistic precision and takes into account a variety of subtle formations, and therefore movements.
In spite of their obvious humor, voluptuous sensuality and beauty of form and color, there is something just a little bit sinister in these painted images. These bulging forms, struggling to escape from their confinement, can be a bit menacing. They appear ready to take over at any moment, as if they cannot be withheld within their confines but are ready to swallow the canvas they're painted on and leave the plane of the picture for unknown destinations. 

Born in Halguin, Cuba, in 1965, Angel Ricardo Ríos has lived in Mexico since 1991; in 1998, he became a Mexican citizen. He completed his studies at the Escuela de Bellas Artes de San Alejandro and at the Instituto Superior de Arte, both in Havana, Cuba. Ríos lives and works in Mexico City.

Paintings by Angel Ricardo Ríos
Saturday, May 27, 5-8pm
Generator Gallery, Fábrica Aurora



Externalizing the internal light

The title of Mick Lorusso's show, "Cosecha de Luz" (Harvest of Light), refers to the images that have arisen out of the artist's meditation process that seeks to access an interior light.

This light is often mentioned in mystical texts of many religions, including Buddhism, Christianity and Sufism. Visions that Lorusso has had in sacred places have emphasized for him the deep interconnection that comes forth through the awakening of this light. 
Lorusso primarily works with oils on canvas or wood. Painting, he says, helps him to reflect and clarify inner images that have an elusive, dreamlike consistency. He follows a similar process with his sculptures. By hanging organic objects from the ceiling or in boxes, he marks the presence of being and movement through a given region.
The exhibit includes about 25 works from the end of 2004 to the present. Six life-size energy figures, meant to show the movement of various energies through the human form, will be in the show, as well as two sculptural installations made of wood and found organic materials.
The exhibit runs through July 9.

"Cosecha de Luz" 
Paintings and sculpture by Mick Lorusso
Museo de La Ciudad de Santiago de Querétaro, Querétaro
Friday, June 2, 8pm



Torres's pictures at an exhibition

Gabriela Torres will hold her first solo exhibition under the auspices of the library's "Space for Young Artists" program. This program offers a space in our gallery to San Miguel's young photographers, painters, sculptors and other artists. Sixteen-year-old Gabriela was born in Mexico City in 1989 and is currently a second-semester student at the El Pípila High School.

She studied photography with Héctor Ulloa Aguilar. In May 2005 she participated in the collective exhibition at her school, and in August of the same year she participated in a collective exhibit at the Ángela Peralta Theatre.

Since September of last year Torres has been a writer for Encuentros, a monthly magazine, contributing "Historias de la Abuela" (Grandma Stories).
The exhibit will run until Saturday, July 15.

Photographs by Gabriela Torres
Friday, June 2, 7pm
Santa Ana Gallery, Biblioteca Pública
Reloj 50