By Pablo de Cuba Soria
Tony Rodriguez (Juan Antonio Rodríguez Olivares) paints from a recurring compositional paradox: the proliferation of oases inhabited by perishable matter (a pair of shoes, a dilapidated car, an umbrella, a coffeepot, a train…) that rest in/float over spaces tending toward infinitude, toward a desolate vastness. The transitory and the persistent intersect within the same frame, upon the same surface (canvas).
Faced with the impossibility of grasping/populating space, the artist constructs these anchor points as one who builds/induces metastases of nodules across the empty expanse of the unconscious. Yet, unlike Dalinian beings and objects—almost entirely made of dreamlike tissues and corresponding to the nightmarish spatial dimension in which they are placed—the beings and objects in Rodríguez Olivares’s paintings seem not to belong to the landscape/territory in which they appear. That is: these oases are exiles in a spatial context foreign to them; however, they have no other choice but to survive.
And in that process of adaptation, an imaginary of juxtapositions emerges, in which the elements ultimately express themselves as amalgams of their own nature. Furthermore, within this agency of the oases there is an implosive growth, directed inward. The nodule creates an enclosure/wall—like a sleeping plant—that separates it from the barren exterior; and, in a parallel (though divergent) movement, it reproduces/expands within itself, shaping an intimate universe that generates devices with pictorial reminiscences of Xul Solar and René Magritte, and cinematic veils reminiscent of Miyazaki.
Thus, condemned to cohabit, the time of the nodule stretches (always perishable), while the infinitude of the exterior unfolds in stagnation. Within the nodules, the gaze extends through the internal proliferations of landscape (urban and/or rural) and matter; one can even see/hear crossings of noises (constant propulsions) and constructions (such as those recurring Towers of Babel), suggesting that within them creative grammars are still being revealed. By contrast, on the exhausted surfaces of the outside world, one would hear only the distorted cawing of some improbable bird.
Tony Rodriguez (Santiago de Cuba, 1980). Visual artist. He has held numerous solo and group exhibitions. He participated in the prelude to a Havana Biennial with the exhibition Refugios del tiempo. He currently resides in Miami.
