Bite The Tongue

Artist's page: http://www.kerlingallery.com/artists/daniel-rios-rodriguez

Kerlin Gallery is delighted to announce its first solo exhibition with the San Antonio-based artist Daniel Rios Rodriguez, Bite The Tongue. An opening reception in the company of the artist will take place on Thursday 6 September.

Rios Rodriguez makes exuberant semi-figurative paintings on wooden panels. His subject matter is rooted in the natural world, drawing upon traditions of landscape, folk painting and memento mori to blend images of plants, animals, suns, moons and mountains with powerful and fantastical kaleidoscopic visions.

Rios Rodriguez works on a modest scale, building coarse layers of impasto paint upon panels of irregular shapes – in this instance, circular and starburst forms varying from 40 to 120 cm in diameter. Past work has incorporated collaged elements of organic detritus, giving it a talismanic quality and prompting The New York Time’s Roberta Smith to draw comparison to the tradition of votive painting (small, usually anonymous paintings on panel that are produced as offerings). In truth, the artist’s influences are hybrid – looking towards vernacular figures like the self-taught Texan painter Forrest Bess as much as the canon of European Modernism. As pointed out by Kyle MacMillan in Art in America, “Daniel Rios Rodriguez’s quirky, unassuming paintings don’t fall into any easily recognizable niche or category”.

For more information, please contact Rosa Abbott: rosa@kerlin.ie.