Arnaldo Roche Rabell, “Do You Know where the Almighty Dwells?”
Point of Contact Gallery will host an opening reception for “The Blue of Ruins,” an exhibition by Arnaldo Roche Rabell, on Thursday, March 24. The reception will take place from 6-8 p.m. and is free and open to the public. Refreshments will be served. Free parking is available the night of the reception in the Syracuse University lot on the corner of West and West Fayette streets.
“The Blue of Ruins” features Roche’s “blue” paintings and drawings made between 2007 and 2016 that use techniques such as brush drawing, scraping and rubbing on the material’s surface to explore what is left of the subject. Concerning his process, Roche states, “I’m trying to see what I cannot see, by looking with my hands.” Many of the works included are still lifes and self-portraits, allowing Roche to comment on both the wholesomeness of the artist as subject and his relationship with memory and the world of objects.
“Mind and body, object and subject, art and nature come to a crisis of form in works that portray an exploded body, a denatured nature and artworks about to come apart” states exhibition guest curator Lilliana Ramos Collado. The upcoming exhibition at Point of Contact Gallery aims at tracing the artist’s conceptual evolvement from full color to blue, and from an affirmative to an exploded subject.
Arnaldo Roche Rabell (b. Puerto Rico, 1955) received his bachelor’s and master’s in fine arts from The Art Institute in Chicago. Roche Rabell’s work has been exhibited individually and collectively in museums and galleries like the Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico (The Puerto Rico Museum of Art), the Chicago Cultural Center and El Museo del Barrio in New York City. His work is in the collections of many prominent museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Art Institute in Chicago, and the Bronx Museum.
“The Blue of Ruins” will be on view at Point of Contact Gallery until June 4. The gallery is open Tuesday through Saturday, noon-5 p.m. or by appointment.
