Roberto del Río

NO ES UN CUERPO LO QUE ES AGUA
May 22, 2021

"(...) this one you see is the shadow of your reflected image: it has nothing of itself"

Confronted by what inhabits the limit between the real and the imaginary, Roberto del Río makes use of burial as a metaphorical resource for the indecipherable quality of the human psyche. His work is made up of fragmented images that are buried under innumerable layers of paint; when trying to apprehend the meaning of the multiple registers that appear, hide and overlap each other, it slips away, distorting itself.

Removed from its primary meaning, the symbolism represented in this work appears as the corpse of something that once was. The voice that persists in silence, yields to silence its audacity to stun. The echo of what appears, but is muted, is impregnated in the emptiness that contains it; meaning becomes a spectrum and is overwhelmed between the layers of a piece that refuses to be possessed by whoever observes it.

Whoever (is) recognized (in) the image that the surface of the work emanates, falls into a labyrinth without beginning or end, without walls or bifurcations; and in the longing to understand what he contemplates, he loses himself in a space that turns into himself. Thus, in the crisis of language, the chaotic escapes from the frontiers of the sign; thus, in the work, a static surface covers the turbulent dynamism of an unfathomable background.

In the deliberate concealment of the warp that makes up his work, Roberto del Río gives in to the impossibility of a dialogue that is not a mere approximation to what the other reflects. In the contemplative catharsis of looking into the abyss, the void returns fertile space for creation; for the (re) invention of that which, idealized and impenetrable, confronts him again.

- Olga Micha
Curator