projection space
Eduardo Rodà
ANNO V No. 58
# 1.
Projection Space
Eduardo Rodà
A selection
of works since 1971
By Gianguido Fucito
The exhibition at Galerie
Bernard comprises a critical overview that spans several years of paintings
produced by Eduardo Rodà. An active player on the Montreal and Quebec artistic
scenes, the artist is ever present, in part because of a full-bodied artistic
production. We can experience his works in their different phases, from 1971 to
2008. A previous document entitled E. Rodà, Space, colour and matter, Arteka
2004, had already portrayed the artist as someone who plays on the
effects of his medium, triggering sensorial values where figures, a thick layer
of paint, and vibrating colours are dominating factors.
We discover the trend of simple means in this one-man
show, the creation of a new genre of projection space, poetic and especially
impressive. Within the selection
of his works, there emerges a space for a linear, geometric perspective,
divisible by a quasi-unlimited roaming of the eye over surfaces whose forms are
created by unusual colourings applied on different planes that project an
impression of depth.
In analysing Rodà’s
paintings, we associate them almost immediately with Concrete Art. Concrete Art creates what is visually
perceivable and its plastic realisation is conditioned by colour, by space, by
light and movement. This form of art is grasped solely by the intellect: those
who as yet have not experienced this art will need a few moments of conceptual
reflection to understand it.
In the history of abstract art, Concrete Art was
short-lived but its influence on the development of modern and contemporary art
is immeasurable. Theo van Doesburg coined the term ‘concrete art’ in 1930,
using it to replace ‘abstract art’. This was also the name of a magazine he had
launched in April 1930, of which a single issue was printed less than a year
before his death. One should note that since then, concrete art dominated
articles written by several artists, such as Arp and Bill, but the fact remains
that this term is the most current and, specifically from 1910 to 1930, the
masters of this art (such as Kandinsky, Malevitch, Mondrian and van Doesburg)
never used any other term but
‘abstract art’.
As early as 1940, Rice
Pereira defined the existence of three types of abstraction: the representative
kind that assaults natural objects, affecting their core essence; the intuitive
kind, which gives shape to the subconscious; and finally, the geometric or
scientific notion of beauty that seeks its equivalent in plastics and emanates
from the revolutionary discoveries of mathematics and physics, of biochemistry,
and as well, radioactivity.
Eduardo Rodà has acquired a reputation thanks to
several major exhibits, including this one, demonstrating the remarkable
coherence of his trajectory, his development through thought, in accordance
with plastic requirements. The canvases seem to dig themselves into squares,
into an infinite void of intense clarity, making the velvety areas stand out
with such precision. Rodà’s mastery affirms itself with colour, more than just
a suspended and jutting reflection, in a no-gravity space. The squares, defined
in such an impeccable manner, and his optic achievement throw us into a subtle,
unpredictable perspective, a space we see as inhabited.
His choice of expressive
space emerges in the exhibit’s title, especially in reference to his most
recent works. The colour palette, the squares\details, the frequencies that
join and separate, then superimpose, are asserted with the emotions felt by the
viewer, the viewer who experiences a profound understanding, capable of delving
deep into the painting. It is
essential for the viewer to make the necessary effort to attain meaningful
insight into Rodà’s work, by imposing abstinence of searching for the lone
decorative element in this type of art, elicited mostly by colours.
To better follow the evolution of Rodà’s paintings, one
must think cubism, raising the idea of a new depiction of space, and, as well,
futurism, seeking a new image to represent movement. On a level of social
values, these two currents combined exalt a mechanical society where, rather
than just concentrating on matter, one’s curiosity focuses instead on the
object, similar to the way modern physics is attracted to energy. As well,
abstract painting, has brought the insert to a newer level, that is, the
indication of a theory of the atomic universe. Abstract painters have
represented something not immaterial but rather primary, cosmic and
indestructible. The MADI movement
(dialectic materialism) affirms that art is the freedom of a society constantly
in the making. Since 1946, the founder of this movement, Carmelo Arden Quin,
insisted that art is in space and we must explore every possibility that exists
therein by confrontation between the created form and all the dimensions in the
surrounding space.
Eduardo Rodà is, in his own way, very close to the
current MADI movement (International Constructed Art), in wanting to express a
universal art on the basic rules of physics and geometry, as are mathematics as
a universal standard, applied to all sectors of human creation. He is therefore a contemporary artist
of the 21st Century, attached to the influences and to the
personalities of artists who have preceded him.
#5.
Through his synthesized forms of elementary geometric
figures – these being lines, squares, triangles, polygons, arcs, circles,
crosses, points – he seeks, as do many of his contemporaries across the world,
the pleasure or the joy in the most simple of fundamental spaces.
Let’s take for example Mondrian’s canvas Boogie-Woogie,
which projects an impression of such joyous abandon (E. H. Gombrich, Invention et Découverte (Invention and
Discovery)). We discover this same feeling that we discover in Rodà’s works,
contained within the limits of a self-imposed discipline. It is obvious that in order to
appreciate them in their just place, Rodà’s work and his approach should be
judged on the basis of prior movements, such as the works of Max Bill,
Vanongerloo, Ellsworth Kelly, the Swiss concrete art since 1930, and the
Argentine MADI movement.
For example, Rodà’s slips of squares on a background of
infinite application, challenge in us a sense of projected space towards a
cosmogonic dimension, as if it were governed by an impalpable universal power
yet felt so profoundly, similar to the one that sustains our new nano-technologies
and thought energy. Here is an opening into the mechanics of abstraction, as
demonstrated during its first years, towards a contemporary abstraction based
on energy that is more in line with supporting the intrinsic values of art
works.
Through contemporary
technological perceptions, Rodà looks for a synthesis – an integration of form
as much as matter and light, capable of suggesting new parameters for paintings
that always represent through deep thinking the simple feelings full of energy
that can form a more advanced base that is more in line with our
contemporaneous perception and current science.
In conclusion, Rodà works with planes by playing with
depth: several of his paintings are composed of two fronts brought together,
one in the background, often opaque, the other more distinctive and almost
transparent in certain areas, through the lighting effect that it produces.
These fronts to which forms are added (squares, rectangles, etc.), relate to
one another via overlapping integrations, coincidences, following a very simple
set of principles. He explores the issue of space and light, of depth,
visibility, shadowing, and variation in such a way that the viewer’s position
brings about a new perception to the canvas, forced also by the appearance of
matter-colour.
Rodà’s art ensures that
knowledge and traditions, in the past upheld worldwide by many Russian, German,
Swiss, Dutch, Polish, Argentine, French, American, Italian, and Canadian
artists, are continued today.
As explained by Gianguido Fucito, “Abstract Art is
always threatened by formalism and decoration; Kandinsky warned us: what is
most important in form, is to know whether it stems from internal necessity or
not.”
Texts
:
(Gianguido
Fucito) Arteka cabinet-conseil
Translation:
Ana Domenica Rodà
© Rodà Archives’ Photos
#1. Installation view – 2008 - Galerie Bernard –
Montreal - Canada
#2. Image Réflex – 1994 – acrylic on convas
122x102 cm.
#3. Facsimile 2 – 1996 - acrylic on convas 51x51
– (each)
#4. Monitor – 1991 – acrylic on convas 120x120x15
cm.
#5. Facsimile 1 – 1993 – acrylic on convas
122x122 cm.
#6. Page Detail – Étiopia – 2002 – acrylic on
convas 51x51 cm.
#7. Red Detail 4 – 2000 – acrylic on convas 51x51
cm.
*For
this exhibition is available a printed catalog English French. If
interested, no cost is bound, please leave your
postal address, writing to: proscenio170@gmail.com
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