english text

 MARTIN   RODRIGUEZ

“A narrator with a brush” is, in a few words, a description of Martin Rodriguez.  His paintings show pieces of a world, scenes, and above all, the building-up of an atmosphere through which one can imagine infinite acting possibilities.  

The world he sees, (or at least the world he has chosen to show us) is orderly, severe, and is subject to strict rules.  These, more than chosen and respected, seem to come from a supreme mandate.  It is a world where there is no place for chaos.  Or where chaos has not enough reasons to be outlined. True to form, it is a reserved world and precisely his power lies in its containment.

There is something disturbing in these places, scenarios and motionless characters  The attention is placed far beyond the technical judgement and the purely aesthetic appreciation.   There is energy, a risk, a threat of break-up and of motion towards the unexpected, which lead us to want to know more.  Furthermore, to know the end.  As if when looking at the painting we would be watching the first scene of a movie.

I have heard many times that in the world of painting, objects are not so important as much as their forms, and the spaces that separate them.  But I do not agree.   His knives, used and several times re-sharpened,  the warm coffee in the red coffee-pot, the bread, the pitchers, and the fruits, are to me, the signs left by the almost always absent characters. In any case, they are stripped of clothing or any other object  which could take them out of anonymity.  These are, precisely, the only acts we have to recognize them.

Martin Rodriguez studied in the United States and Spain. He travelled around Europe for some time and later did several individual and group exhibitions, specially in Spain, Brazil and Argentina.  He is above all an Uruguayan painter.  Here, and no in any “locus virtual” is where his paintings take place.  Though  not present, the beaches of the River Plate are alive, not as a scenery but as a participant, or even more, as an unavoidable witness of reality.   No place is, that I may know, so rich, so young, so melancholic, and so full of contradictions as the River Plate coast.

Martin tells us of these landscapes, which he can sense by watching across a window or beyond a wall, and offers them with poetry.  Nothing is radically different or yet similar in the banks of our River.  I believe there is a profound artistic aesthetic in understanding our world, which is not exactly exotic, tropical nor overwhelmingly wild.  It is different  from the original classic models.

Finally, I feel obliged to refer myself to Martin’s roots.  He is, fundamentally, a classic artist.  His ideas, and his art are bound to the humanistic Greco-Roman traditions.  There are no masks in his school and techniques.  These concepts can be appreciated in any of his sculptures and paintings.  We feel tempted to ask him why he has chosen any particular form, colour or dimension.  When questioned, we become aware of his priestly purity, his simplicity and his absence of vice. The titles of his works, so often repeated, are a clue of his vocation, which find no reason to abandon his roots.  His ingenuity lies, precisely, in clinging to his origins instead of moving away  from them.  Thus, he, as all classic artist, manages to show us, over and over again, the same reality and yet we never get tired of it.

At the beginning of this presentation I mentioned Martin as a narrator with a brush.  I should have added something else.  For instance, that he is a shy narrator, aloof, devoted perhaps to magic games.  Martin does not paint stories, he just proposes them.  Once he has called our attention, he discreetly retires.  It is, in that very moment, when the unique miracle of an artist takes place.  That means leaving us alone with our imagination as our only companion.

                    Alejandro Winograd, Writer

                                             Buenos Aires, 2001