Jorge Rios
Medium: Painting Studio Location: 10-20 46 Ave 2nd floor - Studio# 5 Phone: 7866086543 Email: jorge@jorgerios.net Website:: www.jorgerios.net Artist Bio: Jorge Rios (b. 1988, Havana, Cuba) is a painter's painter. For the artist, who was born in atheist Cuba, painting is an act of reproducing theological creation. It is due partly to design and partly to chance that content emerges from the labor-intensive process of creation, whereby primary colors are remade into a matrix of something new. Influenced by Cuban artists such as Flavio Garciandia (b. 1954), as well as Americans like Rudolf Stingel (b. 1956) and Christopher Wool (b. 1955), Rios' recent work consist of abstract watercolor strokes, drips, and stains, which are afterwards surrounded meticulously with a fine point acrylic marker in such a way that the traditional background/foreground relationship is subverted. Artist Statement: The goal is to make paintings that make Painting happy. I was born and raised under communist Cuba which made me a skeptical person, but also a romantic one. In my skepticism, doubt and critical thinking are an existential necessity. Romanticism is the opposite, being a true believer and surrendering yourself to a higher truth. I try to translate those opposites through art, where they find synthesis in its artifice (construction, illusion, deception) and its reality (actuality, emotion, transformation). My current practice consists of abstract paintings which I make using a combination of water-based pigments and acrylic markers. I create these paintings by shifting between distinctive processes: one???reminiscent of gestural abstraction???is fast and driven by chance. I approach the surface without a preconceived sketch or idea of the outcome, letting the physicality of the brush dictate its own path and creating loose marks loaded with color. The second phase???informed by minimalism???consists of filling out any fragments of the surface untouched by the brush using a small marker. In contrast with first part of the process this one is mechanical, detailed, and slow. These works aim to destabilize classic relationships such as background versus foreground, hard and soft edge, spontaneity vis a vis intentionality, accident and control, as well as fast and slow mark-making. But this destabilization is not rebellious???in the way that a certain avant-garde spirit might embody reaction against tradition. In my work, the co-existence of various modes of painting occurs as a continued examination into the history of abstraction not for the sake of innovation, but out of excitement for exploring the genre itself. For me, to paint is to actively explore painterly conventions, artistic perception, and the process of creation. I believe a good painting is more like a poem or a symphony. It should connect us with that which ordinary language cannot: the ineffable, the absurd, the vital force. All images and text copyright Jorge Rios