Gamaliel Rodriguez’s work explores the aesthetic and the visual quality created by drawing with ballpoint pen and more recently, felt-tip pen (Sharpie) to present a style that references old illustrations and printmaking including etching and dry point, evoking architectural plans. He is interested in the notion of security and insecurity produced by non-referential images. Smoke is used in Rodriguez’s work as an illustrative code. In the history of humanity, smoke and fire can produce a series of sensations to us depending on the situation. The primitive part of the brain could recognize smoke or fire as a familiar and natural manifestation. In the 21st century, an image of a structure, a unity, a system, a space, a location or an object covered by smoke and flames could be read as a raid, malfunction, miss-firing, oppression, liberty, the end or the beginning, terrorism, anarchy, civil rights, manifestation, sublimation, sabotage and any number of related political terms. Rodriguez is interested in how such a simple reaction of combustion can be reinterpreted as a complex analysis of insecurities. He is currently working on a series of drawings based on the concepts of appropriation, re-interpretation and deconstruction of messages based on Roland Barthes and his analysis of semiotics.

Gamaliel Rodriguez (b. 1977 Bayamon, Puerto Rico) obtained an MA in Visual Arts at the Kent Institute of Art and Design in Kent and the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 2011. His recent exhitions include, Solo Projects, ARCO, Madrid; Focus Latinoamerica. DA2 Domus Artium 2002, Salamanca and The End of History… and The Return of History Painting, Museum voor Moderne Kunst Arnhem.