April 13 - May 28th (EXTENDED SHOW)
Inquiries... Inquiries without clear answers! It is from this fertile ground that Rafael's artistic explorations sprout. His work over the past twenty years has primarily focused on the human preoccupation with the sacred in juxtaposition to the profane, on how this influences individual and collective thinking, feelings, attitudes, behavior, and identity.
He investigates these themes through visual metaphors using, for instance, vessels as anthropomorphic representations, exemplified by Rhopography III: Vessels and the other works in this exhibit.
While his work is conceptually fueled by intellectual inquiries, it is formally nurtured by Rafael's aesthetic curiosity and his love for materials and techniques. He often uses play and improvisation as tools for envisioning and executing the work.
Compositional elements such as color and scale become guidelines for discovery. The influence which Dada and Surrealism have had on the artist for over twenty years becomes even more evident in this new body of work. Rafael is treating objects and his own clay works as found objects, charging them with meaning and bringing them together through decisions seemingly guided by unconscious connections and emotional projections; the painterly sculptures "become" as if by chance.
The creative process is, for Rafael, a metaphor for living. He writes:
"Creation, circular, unending cycle.
Maker and medium transformed.
Thoughts, words, actions, habits... Become!"
He sees parallels between the way humans make art and the way we shape our lives... or how life shapes us.
The subject of this exhibit is the still life. Formally, the works are color studies. Conceptually, they are dealing with metaphor.
Rhopography, a subcategory of still life, can be described as the representation (or presentation!) of trivial, ordinary, insignificant objects.
Born 1966 in Colombia, South America, Rafael is a visual and performing artist. He received a Master of Fine Arts in 1997 from the prestigious Cranbrook Academy of Art. His artwork has been exhibited, among other venues, at American University Museum at the Katzen Arts Center, Penn State University, the Allentown Art Museum, and the State Museum of Pennsylvania.
To see examples of Rafael's past work, visit his website: http://www.rafaelcanizares.com/art/Home.html
The show will open at 7:00pm on Friday, April 13th. We hope to see you here at the House!