BE THEREMichael Rodriguez 2007Presented by Oliver Kamm/5BE Gallery March 23, 2007- April 21, 2007Reception: March 23, 6:00 pm - 8:00 pmMichael RodriguezOliver Kamm/5BE Gallery is pleased to present a new series of paintings and drawings by Michael Rodriguez, marking his second solo show with the gallery. Rodriguez continues his signature use of repetitive, circular gestures, but seems to have ‘zoomed out’ from the earlier paintings to reveal more sprawling, intricate structures. Subtle geometric color fields divide the backgrounds of the paintings while colorful rayon fibers - pink, light blue, ochre, and purple – rise to the surface and emerge between the clusters of opalescent cells. At times, the bold, oil spill of rayon fibers is haphazard, more like a reckless stain than the calculated pour of earlier paintings. In describing Rodriguez’s paintings and process, Barry Schwabsky writes: “It’s as though a purely Cartesian spatial rationalism – the simple positing of the two axes and their arbitrary meeting at point 0 – had given rise to some far more vitalist sense of lived space, forms bubbling up into rudimentary existence out of some elemental breach in the unity of ether. Here, existence itself takes on a metaphorical image as a sort of vital process.” (From “Process and Paradox” Catalog Essay, g-module Gallery, Paris, 2005) Like the paintings, the drawings employ the use of various materials, in this case ink and enamel - subtle and bold, respectively. The series of drawings take on another dimension as enamel is poured on top of the cellular structure, accenting and mimicking the circular forms. The enamel, similar to the final layer of rayon fibers used in the paintings, draws our attention to the multi-layered universe Rodriguez creates in his work.
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