FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

LnS GALLERY presents
Prominent Miami-based Artist, Arturo Rodríguez, Exhibits New Work, at Coconut Grove’s LnS Gallery
Esteemed Cuban-born, American painter presents his love letter to painting.

MIAMI, FL (October 2018) – LnS GALLERY continues their second Fall exhibition season with ARCIMBOLDO’S GHOSTS, a visual treasure hunt alighting heart and intellect by Cuban-born, American artist Arturo Rodríguez, one of Miami’s most prominent and achieved artists. Visitors will feast sensorially through his work on Saturday, November 17 for an opening reception in Coconut Grove.

The series ARCIMBOLDO’S GHOSTS contemplates the muniments of art history, responding with “a love letter to painting” as described by Alejandro Anreus, Ph.D., which layers story upon story, painting within painting; applying the very medium to overtly reinterpret the visual poetry of Masters in homage to their influence, always with a focus on the universal theme of “displacement”. The accompanying catalog features essays by two special guest contributors: art historian, professor, and author Alejandro Anreus, Ph.D., as well as art curator, critic, and journalist Lilly Wei.

The style of the series’ titular inspiration – the 16th century Italian Mannerist painter Giuseppe Arcimboldo – is effectively incorporated in the portraiture of human forms represented in imaginative natural images such as flowers, fish, fruits, and vegetables. Rodríguez tropicalizes Arcimboldo’s traditional still-life elements by substituting the flora of his birthplace and the arsenal of his profound exploration of art history.

“At first glance they all seem whimsical, playful, but underneath the depth of the human condition can be sensed; tragedy and comedy, nothingness and meaning encountered and balanced in our existence…Homage and parody are knitted together in these poetic evocations, which of course are very much a part of the tradition of painting in Europe and the Americas,” art critic and historian Alejandro Anreus writes of the series. In echoing the satirical, clever nature of Arcimboldo, Rodríguez’s resulting work speaks to one of art’s crucial purposes in service of humanity.

During four decades of his career Arturo Rodriguez has received numerous accolades and has been part of 20 personal exhibitions worldwide. The artist’s works are collected by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, and profuse private and public International collectors. He is the recipient of numerous grants and awards: the Joan Mitchell Foundation grant in Visual Art, two-time recipient of the Cintas Fellowship, and two-time recipient of the Florida Individual Artist Fellowship award.

Underlying Arturo Rodríguez’s work is a scaffolding constructed of his life experience: he was first transplanted from Cuba to Spain as an impressionable teen, then again as a young man to the new world metropolis and the hub of the Caribbean and Hispanic culture – Miami. The uprooting exposed him to the entangled complexities of the human condition across time, place, and cultures, and incited a lifelong curiosity. In Madrid, he discovered the Prado Museum and was enraptured. Diving headlong into the affair of his life’s work, the masters in its galleries educated and influenced him; he drank deeply from the fountain of their inspiration. In this genesis, a yearning to connect to the source of all artistic energy – to channel it- brought forth the artist within.

“When a series ends” the artist has said, “I leave it and begin another series that is completely different. There is always a stylistic trajectory in the paintings, but the approaches change as I paint them since I do not follow any formula.”

Arturo Rodríguez expresses his accomplished figurative art in a range of mediums including mixed media, collage, watercolors, and drawings. Always working in series, the artist prefers to assiduously inhabit each concept, evolving the expression by allowing the contextual path to reveal itself.

“He invests his figuration with borrowings from other images, overtly so, creating not only a visually compelling hybrid, but also one that represents a dense and layered history of art that is personal, idiosyncratic,” writes art historian Lilly Wei. Formative influences such as Cezanne’s The Bather, Diane Arbus’ Child with Toy Hand Grenade in Central Park, and Courbet’s self-portrait and servant with walking sticks from The Encounter connect us to the essence of their expressive intention as Rodríguez concurrently develops the concepts within, advancing each narrative, folding those stories into his own prolific story. “It’s a visual treasure hunt to find them and identify the sources, challenging and engaging the viewer,” adds Wei.