EXHIBITION: September, 2023

Opening First Thursday, September 7th, 2023

Davidson Galleries is pleased to share new work from Mexican artist Artemio Rodríguez. Featured are nine new linocuts from 2022 and 2023. Rodríguez balances complexity and simplicity to assemble striking scenes, figures, and stories in bold linocuts. The narratives unwind with layers of pattern, background characters, references to Mexican legends and antique European works, and mischief in every corner.
Rodríguez’s new works emphasize some of his best-loved figures – skeletons, devils, animals, children, and royalty of Michoacán – in acts of celebration, seduction, and play. He captures a multitude of experiences within one moment and one image. Entire scenes of a play, entire poems, unfold in stark black lines.
The abundant joy of a crowd is displayed in La Boda (The Wedding) from the smiling bride and groom, to the composed dancers, the engrossed musicians, and curious child peeking from behind the stage. Rodríguez leaves no detail behind, taking care to include the patterns on the pottery, the little dog, and the man on horseback in the distance. At the feast in La Frágil Vida (The Fragile Life), amidst cheers, slaps, and embraces, Rodríguez shows the motivations of every imaginable guest – those who came for the food, for the drink, for the music, for the debauchery, and those who wish they hadn’t come at all. Most of all, he captures everyone’s willingness to ignore the priest and their obliviousness to the skeleton and devil who are about to fell the tree upon which they carry out their fragile lives. Where there is joy, Rodríguez creates pure elation; where there is majesty, he creates regal power; where there is humor and hypocrisy, he is the first to point and laugh.