RUBÉN RODRIGO

Rodrigo develops a pictorial practice deeply connected to light, color, and gesture. His work moves along the edges of lyrical abstraction, guided by intuition, rhythm, and a poetics of controlled accident. The artist explores the possibilities of monochrome through liquid painting techniques reminiscent of Japanese sumi-e: a single stroke that contains everything, allowing color to breathe, expand, and enter into dialogue with space.

The title of the show, La minipesca de la trucha en el Empordà, playfully and poetically alludes to Trout Fishing in America by Richard Brautigan, an unclassifiable book that oscillates between melancholy and irony, memory and invention. In a similar way, this exhibition unfolds as a kind of emotional and spiritual journey through color: a quiet, contemplative exploration, guided by the subtle pulse of what cannot be seen but can be sensed.

During his residency, Rodrigo stumbled upon an invisible river: a dry stream that runs through the village, only perceptible through its traces. The idea of a river one must imagine, that flows even if unseen, became a central metaphor for the project. And as if the artist’s desire held a certain summoning power, just days later, torrential rains filled the riverbed with water. Nature responded to the poetic gesture.

La minipesca de la trucha en el Empordà is built in that space between absence and presence, between the real and the imagined, between shadow and flight. The works that make up the exhibition do not illustrate this story, they expand it. They speak of time, of silence, of waiting, and of that particular light that appears just before (or after) something happens.

This presentation is accompanied by a text by writer Carmen Rotger, which offers an intimate and evocative reading of the process experienced by the artist during his stay in La Bisbal, a kind of lyrical chronicle that transcends the boundaries of traditional exhibition language.

A VERY BRIEF HISTORY OF TROUT MINIFISHING IN EMPORDÀ

Rubén didn’t know the streams, which is why he wanted to fill them with water, with trout, with minifishing. I did know them, and I tried to explain: “You can’t fill a riverbed that wants to stay empty.”

He knew springs, books, flexibility. I tried again: “Here, the water is there, even when it’s not. We leave the riverbed for it, in case it decides to wander by.” In early July, it rained for three days in La Bisbal d’Empordà. The stream filled with water. It was because Rubén had insisted. But now Rubén wanted to keep the flow going. I tried to explain: “The water has other plans.” Rubén tried to explain himself: “The flow is not the flow, and the stream can indeed be a fierce river. Let me do this.” After that, he went off to paint. We didn’t see him again until the stream had completely dried up. Only now, there was a dreamed-up river. And trout could be fished too, in an activity now and forever known as “Trout Minifishing in L’Empordà.”

— Carmen Rotger