Ricardo Cabret


Puerto Rico (b.1985)



In these new works, Ricardo Cabret continues his ongoing practice of rendering and abstracting data networks whose invisible architectures overtake the landscape. Writing software code as a tool for abstracting ideas, Cabret takes lines and forms from his code-based works as the basis for his compositions. He then embeds these sketches and hidden messages into the paintings, which he freely layers with paint and polymers. Some works are left as gestural studies, appearing only as undercoats, an exercise in restraint. Others resemble miniatures of large-scale works, representing a significant shift in scale for the artist. Two smalls of the artist’s, Barracas (2022), an ominous landscape of a beach that has suffered environmental decay and overdevelopment in Puerto Rico, tether the installation. Arranged together, the works move from light into dark, a proposal for stillness in an era of endless accumulation of land, capital, and technological growth.