Diego Rodriguez-Warner: Then, Again
February 28 - July 05,2020
Then, Again, Diego Rodriguez-Warner’s first solo exhibition with the gallery. This show presents an evolution in Diego Rodriguez-Warner’s practice towards the development of paintings that are more pared down in scale and color, yet continue to unobtrusively express themes of entropy, anxieties, violence, and truth through cunning beauty and domesticity. His works are a thoughtful amalgamation of traditional high art, printmaking and street art practices that merge through his deep engagement with art and human history. Rodriguez-Warner's work plays with the deconstruction of both figure and surface. He begins by adding to his established vocabulary of forms, silhouettes and nudes from known and lesser-known artists, unrestrained by time period and art movement. He then eliminates the noise and context around his subjects to make them contemporary, allowing him to capture the interconnectedness and influence time and cultures have on one another through universal underlying themes. He then mobilizes the extracted forms into renewed configurations, liberating their dormant existence. The delicate paper cutouts become twisted and contorted, imparting movement to familiar faces that passively gazed back at you from an art museum. The familiar, objectified idle nudes overflow with sensuality and vigor, revealing human anxieties and flaws that exist in a dynamic global world. Once they find their placement in carefully arranged maquettes, the translation of the painted shadows reveal the original design. Applying printmaking techniques he selectively carves and stains the panels’ surface, moving along with the wood’s materiality through color imperfections, voids, and knots that add their own voice to the final piece. The compositions are filled with subtle critiques and carefully masked wit and cynicism. By skillfully capturing the timeless essence of the past, the works become playful and familiar, as well as independently lyrical and novel, revealing a history of their own. Diego Rodriguez-Warner (Managua, Nicaragua,1986) lives and works in Denver, CO. In 2008, he studied under the Cuban Minister for Fine Arts, Lesbia Vent Dumois, in Havana, and earned BA’s in COIN Theory and Fine Arts from Hampshire College in 2009. In 2013, he received his MFA from RISD and upon graduation was awarded the Toby Devan Lewis Fellowship. Rodriguez-Warner has exhibited both nationally and internationally including Havana, Berlin, New York City, and was selected for Art of the State 2020 at Crystal Bridges Museum of Modern Art, AR. Regionally he has exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Denver; the Museo De Las Americas, Denver; the Gallery of Contemporary Art, Colorado Springs among others.
Artist talk: April 04, 2020 | 2-4 pm
RULE Gallery (Marfa)
204 E. San Antonio St
Marfa, Texas 79843
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