RAIR | 2008-09

Rigoberto Gonzalez

Born in 1973 in Reynosa Tamaulipas, Mexico, Rigoberto lives in Edinburg, Texas He holds a B.F.A. from The University of Texas at Pan America in 1999 and an M.F.A. from the New York Academy of Art in 2004. He currently teaches drawing and painting at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. Gonzalez’s work has been exhibited at the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, Washington, DC, the Konsthallen Bohuslan Museum, Uddevalla, Sweden, The Museum of Contemporary Art Branch of the National Museum in Wrocław, Poland, The Guildhall Art Gallery, London, England. Rigoberto has participated in artist residencies at the Roswell Artist-in-Residence Program, Roswell, New Mexico and at the Santa Fe Art Institute Artist Residency Program, Santa Fe, New Mexico.

My current work consists of a representational tableaus that revisit the narrative paradigm. The salient naturalism of the tableaus is derivative and informed by the consciously formulaic artifice of Spanish, Neopolitan, Caravagist figuration. It is an attempt to appropriate the visual vernacular of a European culture and to draw a historical allusion. A theme running thru the paintings is the brutality associated with drug cartels in the border region between Mexico and the United states.

In my paintings I appropriate and connect the depiction of violence by Caravaggist, Neapolitan painters with the portrayal of violence in corridos. A corrido is a Mexican folk ballad in the past singers would document events in their communities or the lives of heroes from the Mexican revolution but recently they have focused on the lives of drug smugglers. Essentially a corrido tells a story, it is a narrative. There is usually a violent theme to a corrido; However, I am not interested in a journalistic version of violence. Corridos like Caravaggist paintings are not prose but verse.

—Rigoberto A. Gonzalez

Roswell Museum and Art Center

Rair exhibition • Rigoberto A Gonzalez “Barocco de la Frontera" •February 21 - March 29, 2009

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.

Caroline Brooks, Assistant Director, Roswell Museum and Art Center