RUBÉN RODRIGO

Rubén Rodrigo’s practice is rooted in an exploration of the sublime through improvisation and controlled chance. His works are infused with a certain mystery and a tactile quality that conveys a sense of lightness and fluidity. Inspired by the Japanese Sumi-e technique, Rodrigo employs a single, deliberate stroke, allowing liquid paint to drip and spread across the canvas, creating a rhythmic interplay of color and light. The artist’s work transcends the physicality of color, engaging in a poetic dialogue with light, space and art history, while cultivating an atmosphere marked by pauses, restraint, and the subtle effects of time and shadow.

CASA Y ALREDEDORES (House and Surroundings)
By Carmen Rotger

In this text there is a house and a literary margin –because reading is remembering – that aim to get you, the reader, closer to the works presented here.

Let us wander around various chambers, because calling them “rooms” is less fun, and fun is one of the fundamental purposes. Let us look as if everything were a performance—or perhaps not.

Around the words, –we enter the house through a library, of course–: these landscapes call themselves “works” rather than “pieces”. Notice that the artist has something of the ant about them .

There is, surprisingly, an oratory, because this is a house rich in so many ways. And in the oratory, of course, one prays, falls silent, and listens to what comes from beyond—which, in this case, also comes from within. To reach the oratory, one must pass through a hallway. One walks to induce the trance.

Around the materials, which are attic or storge in this walk, we find a defense in the shape of an ellipsis. Against the density of paint as paste, liquidity. Which is the same as saying, “there is an environmental density that color gives when it’s mixed through transparency, and not through the imposition of an opaque stain.” Which is the same as saying, “if there were a river, we wouldn’t see the river.”.

There is a bathroom, but we are clean.

Around mimesis –so much “m” makes you sleepy, this is a bedroom–, there is another unexpected mimesis. The landscape, a more or less intentional pictorial result, is its memory. There is not really a landscape; it is the artist remembering, evoking with the exact tone a small vibration. A song plays, telling the story of a spa in Mondariz, of the first outdoor paintings, of learning to look at nature through the lens of El Greco.

There is a dining room, but we are not hungry.

Nearby, the kid’s bedroom. Big plush dice in the center of the room force one to think about chance, and there is a command: improvisation. This is how intention grows, and it’s also how we turn the ego into a little monster that hides.

Around the composition, which would be something like the kitchen, the figures were a surplus or a mere formality. That was some time ago, and the pots have gathered some dust. The figures disappeared because they were unnecessary, and the background became Enough, and it became independent. Everything here is background, and that is why the idea of background disappears. What’s here are paintings.

There is a balcony.

In this house we wander through, toward the end, there is a gallery that serves as an explanatory resource. Some images are of different sizes, because the artist is always searching, and that is why it is so. There is fragmentation, inconsistency, and variety, but it’s fine, because that’s why these works resemble thought. Despite the above, there is a sympathy between the paintings. Almost friendship.

We pause around the way of exhibiting, that is, we stroll through a window of windows. We look at the house from within, and it is ours.

There is a balcony, but there’s no need to step outside: let’s keep strolling.