• DAGOBERTO RODRÍGUEZ

    CUBA, 1969

print

Photography: STUDIO DAGOBERTO RODRÍGUEZ 
13 / 05 / 2022
Text: VERÓNICA DE MELLO
I met Dagoberto when we were preparing the exhibition he was about to inaugurate in Lisbon in 2017. At the time, he was part of the artists’ collective that went by the name Los Carpinteros, a duo that worked together for more than 25 years, achieving considerable international reputation. 
Their works can be found in the collections of major museums such as the Museum of Modern Art in New York (MoMA), the Georges Pompidou Centre in Paris, the Tate Gallery in London, to name but a few.
Currently, Dagoberto works as an independent artist, with the same problematics that have beset him since 1992 and takes with him “his original coordinates in his reflection and research work.” He uses humour and a fine and subtle way of ironising reality as a way of expressing himself. Everything is political without the message being blunt; the work lingers in the gaze of its viewer who can then draw their own conclusions from this critical and ironic aesthetics.

Raised in the coastal port of Caibarien, Cuba, he first painted seascapes, but it was far from his hometown, at the Instituto Superior de Arte in Havana, that he trained and developed his approach as an artist. He lived in a militarised Cuba, where the imminence of war was a fantasy that never materialised. Perhaps this is why his works with bombs made out of clay, handmade satellites and toy war symbols interact with these same universes, that are always present in the life of those who grew up in a dystopian and communist regime, isolated from the rest of the world.
In society, he is particularly interested in the webs of power. He coined the concept “archaeology of power”, a personal investigation that aims to visualize and understand physical and psychological issues built by the networks of power in society, be they political power, technological or other formats that influence and intervene in an invisible but controlling way in our daily lives.
His work gravitates between sculpture, drawing, painting and video, all media to better explore what concerns him. The use of watercolour as a medium to convey sculpture would become for him, over time, a visual language to communicate with the viewer.  
  • DAGOBERTO RODRÍGUEZ
DAGOBERTO RODRÍGUEZ. Photo © Lisa Gómez 
  • DAGOBERTO RODRÍGUEZ
SOLO EXHIBITION: “FUTURO ALTERNATIVO”. PALAZZO DEL PARCO. SALA R. FALCHI. CORSO GARIBALDI.DIANO MARINA,ITALY. Photo © Jordi Cugat. 
  • DAGOBERTO RODRÍGUEZ
  • DAGOBERTO RODRÍGUEZ
  • DAGOBERTO RODRÍGUEZ
  • DAGOBERTO RODRÍGUEZ
  • DAGOBERTO RODRÍGUEZ
  • DAGOBERTO RODRÍGUEZ
  • DAGOBERTO RODRÍGUEZ
  • DAGOBERTO RODRÍGUEZ
  • DAGOBERTO RODRÍGUEZ
“ISLA NARANJA”, 2020. WATERCOLOR ON PAPER, 130x130 cm. 
  • DAGOBERTO RODRÍGUEZ
  • DAGOBERTO RODRÍGUEZ
“SATELITE DE BARRO UNO”, 2019. WATERCOLOUR ON PAPER. 
  • DAGOBERTO RODRÍGUEZ
  • DAGOBERTO RODRÍGUEZ
“ÁNFORAS I", 2020. FIRED CLAY, VARIABLE DIMENSIONS. COLLECTION SOLO, MADRID. 
  • DAGOBERTO RODRÍGUEZ
“PATRIA O MUERTE”, 2018. CHROME BRONZE AND PAINT, 21x69x4 cm. 
  • DAGOBERTO RODRÍGUEZ
  • DAGOBERTO RODRÍGUEZ
For Dagoberto Rodríguez, art is a tool of knowledge and for recording human existence, it is a pacemaker of the events of the world: “as artists, we perform a social role and we are heard.” His works are defined by their multiple layers of understanding and meaning, while in the simplicity of his drawings and watercolours one encounters the complexity of analytical thought, but also poetry and sensitivity. 
  • DAGOBERTO RODRÍGUEZ
“ISLA ROJA” DETAIL, 2020. 
  • DAGOBERTO RODRÍGUEZ
  • DAGOBERTO RODRÍGUEZ
“INTERIOR DE LEGO AZUL”, 2019. WATERCOLOR ON PAPER, 130 X 200 cm. 
  • DAGOBERTO RODRÍGUEZ
  • DAGOBERTO RODRÍGUEZ
  • DAGOBERTO RODRÍGUEZ
“PERDÓNAME”, ACAPULCO. Photo © EFe/Yander Zamora 
close

Subscreva a nossa Newsletter, para estar a par de todas as novidades da nossa edição impressa e digital.