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roswell artist-in-residence program
& the
 roswell museum and art center

present in the Marshall Gallery

Rigaberto A. Gonzalez

"Barocco de la Frontera"
February-March, 2009

 

        
   

Levatron
(Kidnapping)
Oil/linen   82" x 100" 2009
head2

head4

Cabron Degollado
Oil/Linen
20" x 18", 2008

Cabron Degollado
Oil/Linen
24" x 18", 2008

head3 Rigo head1
Cabron Degollado
Oil/Linen
20" x 20", 2008

Cabron Degollado
Oil/Linen
18" x 16", 2007

Rigoberto Gonzalez’s Baroque-inspired paintings explore contemporary issues affecting the Texas-Mexico border region. The figures in his paintings, drawn from both historic and contemporary corridos (or Mexican folk ballads), portray and inform life along the border—the brutality associated with drug cartels, tales from folklore, and moments of domestic tranquility. By merging centuries-old European vernacular with contemporary narratives, a historical allusion is drawn between the propensity of harsh violence in religious and secular paintings from the 16th and 17th centuries with the intense brutality in some border regions today. Depicting past and present, current events and historic folklore, Gonzalez’s canvases serve as portals to a people who struggle to balance the beauty and violence of daily living.

 

Gonzalez was born in Reynosa, Tamaulipas, Mexico. He received a BFA degree from The University of Texas Pan American in 1999 and a MFA degree from The New York Academy of Art in 2004. His work is currently on exhibit in solo exhibitions at galleries and museums in both Texas and Mexico.

 

"Por el Bravo y sus riveras, cuanto corrido se ha escripto, por Tamaulipas y Texas, como hay hombres delitos...."
Reynaldo Martinez, Palvo Maldito

Conjunto Del  Bravo
(Singers from the Bravo)
Oil/ linen, 72" x 86",  2008

 

 

 

Norte
Oil/Linen
60" x 36", 2006

La Llorona y Otros Fantasmas
(The Llorona and Other Ghosts)
Oil/ Linen, 80" x 60",  2008

  

MARSYAS
So he related how the clowns were changed to leaping frogs; and after he was through, another told the tale of Marsyas, in these words: The Satyr Marsyas, when he played the flute in rivalry against Apollo's lyre, lost that audacious contest and, alas! His life was forfeit; for, they had agreed the one who lost should be the victor's prey. And, as Apollo punished him, he cried, “Ah-h-h! why are you now tearing me apart? A flute has not the value of my life!” Even as he shrieked out in his agony, his living skin was ripped off from his limbs, till his whole body was a flaming wound, with nerves and veins and viscera exposed. But all the weeping people of that land, and all the Fauns and Sylvan Deities, and all the Satyrs, and Olympus, his loved pupil—even then renowned in song, and all the Nymphs, lamented his sad fate; and all the shepherds, roaming on the hills, lamented as they tended fleecy flocks. And all those falling tears, on fruitful Earth, descended to her deepest veins, as drip the moistening dews,—and, gathering as a fount, turned upward from her secret-winding caves, to issue, sparkling, in the sun-kissed air, the clearest river in the land of Phrygia,—through which it swiftly flows between steep banks down to the sea: and, therefore, from his name, 'tis called “The Marsyas” to this very day.  
Metamorphoses by Ovid

Cabrito (Goat Head)
Oil   2008

 

OTHER RECENT EXHIBITIONS


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