Wednesday, July 10, 2013
'Gazing at the World while Hanging from the Sky: A Retrospective' - Ofelia Rodriguez, Consulate General of Colombia, 9th July 2013
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| Gazing at the World while hanging from the Sky, mixed media, 2009 |
Then again there's nothing wrong with a nation being proud of one of its children. Ofelia Rodriguez is a renowned contemporary Colombian artist. Graduating with a BA from the University of the Andes in Bogotá, she became the first Colombian artist to be accepted to Yale University, where she graduated with an MA. Her career then took her to Paris, with a 1980 exhibition in the Grand Palais and a 1981 exhibition at Centre Culturel Jacques Prévert. She's since exhibited all over the world, receiving an award at Colombia's most prestigious art prizes - the Salon Nacional de Artistas and featuring in numerous art publications as a must-see artist. This exhibition, Gazing at the World while Hanging from the Sky, is a retrospective - looking back at her long and successful career.
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| Tongue Sending From The Sky Her Love to the Turtle With All Her Happiness, mixed media on paper, 2010 |
The composition of the paintings is infused a similar energy - this is a collection of bold lines made up of confident, almost instinctive brush-strokes that create striking contrasts between colour blocks. In Tongue Sending to the Sky Her Love to the Turtle... two huge expanses of blue and yellow are divided by a strong black line which looks as if it was created in one sweeping, passionate movement across the canvas. You can see similar effects in Dead Landscape and Pink Magic Landscape, both of which hum with spontaneity and life. Granted, perhaps this is the illusion of unbridled, energy - for all I know Rodriguez takes great efforts to simulate it. But either way it doesn't matter, if it is an illusion, it's a perfect one.
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| Dead Landscapes in Mid-air, mixed media on canvas, 1989 |
The one organ that crops up time and time again is the heart. Many of these paintings look like abstractions of the anatomy of the heart; especially the orange and pink Dead Landscape in Mid-air, or Flying Landscape With Remembrances Hung from a Cloud, both of which feature arterial pipes connecting the elements of the pieces together. Attacking an Injured Heart gets straight to the meat of the matter, with an anatomical heart dead centre, bordered by pop art guns.
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| Magic Box with Banker pondering whether to turn Cowboy, 2006 |
Granted, nobody is going to walk out of here pondering depressing existential questions, so there are limits to this freedom. But this exhibition isn't going to appeal to everyone. You have to do a lot of legwork to get what is, in the end, an entirely subjective message. That's not enough for some people - it's perfectly reasonable to view, say, Magic Box With the Hand Protecting The Toucan From The Bull and see a jumbled-up jigsaw of mixed imagery without any guide to putting it together. To appreciate work like this you have to embrace the idea that you're not going to understand everything, there's no 'key' that'll unlock these pieces.
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| Attacking an Injured Heart, 2008 |
This exhibition runs at the Consulate General of Colombia, Wescott House, 35 Portland St, London, W1B 1AE from 10th July to 26th July 2013
Opening Hours: Monday to Friday, 9am to 1:30pm, or by appointment. For information about the exhibition, please contact Sandra Higgins at sandra@sandrahiggins.com
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