Rubén Rodríguez (Matanzas, Cuba. 1959.
Ruben Rodriguez (b Cardenas, Matanzas, Cuba, 1959) Graduated from the Provincial School of Plastic Arts in Villa Clara, 1975 and from the National School of Plastic Arts in Havana, Cuba in 1980 with a degree specializing in painting, engraving and drawing. Ruben is founder of the Experimental Serigraphy(Screen Printing) Workshop, “Rene Portocarrero and Professor at the Engraving Department in the Cuban University of Arts (ISA) in Havana. He has received the Distinction for National Culture in Havana, Cuba, along with the Distinction for Artistic Value. His art is featured in museums, galleries and private collections in Germany, Spain, Mexico, Brazil, Iran, Venezuela, Portugal, France and Cuba.
Within the history of Modern Art, I find certain parallels with approaches that Egon Shiele took from his guide Gustav Klimt, evolving them to the heat of the implict mockery in his sensuality, which intensifies the dramatic force to the grotesque, ravishing the conventional physical forms adopting fragmentation, enforcing foreshortening and at the same time, flat planes. From his viewpoint, Rubén manages to disarrange the real proportions of their bodies that respond to the excesses and exaggerations provoked by carnal desire, unimaginable couplings as well as implicit and conceivable fetishisms in the rapturous morphology—to the Cuban, without any crude drama.
Rubén arrives at the Kendall Art Center in Miami with a budding vision, gifting us answers through a kaleidoscopic corporal language, comprised of the infinite postures with which the act allows us to further approach the sublime. Introducing him is enriching for me, that I have the honor to curate the show and for this institution whose founder, collector Leo Rodríguez, has always been guided by his open perception of our art, which from this offshore promotional platform, seeks to broaden his historical understanding without the usual deformities and gaps that generate hatred and certain established interests. .
Fragment retrieved from the essay “Change and Lusts” by Aldo Menéndez.
Untitled, Engraving on heavy paper, 11.5 x 15.25"
Y pasó 2017, Charcoal and Acrylic on Canvas, 60 x 46"
Untitled 2, Engraving on heavy paper, 11.5 x 15.25"