DaWire

Based in Brooklyn, New York, Carlos Rodríguez uses photography, sculpture and drawing to appropriate idioms from modernism transforming them into contemporary works that often speak of the relationship between the self, the audience and the art object. Playing with the idea of reflection and likeness, the artist often uses mirrors to construct his works, such as Greeting Flower, Fertilizing My Ever Growing Garden of Fears and Kickable Mirror.[...]

From the “everything is possible as long as it isn’t painting” attitude of the ‘90s we have arrived at “everything is possible as long as it is painting.” However, as art critics David Lillington and Benjamin Buchloh have outlined, we have returned to “a new classicism” that manifests itself in the return of easel painting and traditional values; and of which schools such as Leipzig, Dresden, and artists like Neo Rauch and Peter Doig are the clearest representatives. Maybe we should ask ourselves a basic question: what would Velazquez’s artistic practice be like today?[...]

Painting for a Specific Floor is a collaborative work that explores the ideas of horizontality and fluidity, as well as surfaces and topography. The work defies the preconception of the work of art as an object meant solely to be looked at. It also challenges the supremacy of the visual sense over other senses, betting on a direct experience with the work; an encounter between the spectator and the work, the piece and the place it inhabits.[...]

In a detached manner, alone in the studio, Stuart Cumberland begins painting by dropping his trousers and pants to his ankles and howling the names of his forebears.[...]