Title: Anamnesis
Description: After more than twelve years of experience, the painting by Omar Rodriguez-Graham (Mexico, 1978) is at a turning point. Developed alongside an exhibition at the Casa del Lago UNAM and the Museum of the City of Querétaro, Anamnesis is a book that records a particular moment of one of the most stimulating artists of his generation. Since 2014 he has developed about thirty paintings under the concept of anamnesis, or pictorial reminiscence, which are constructed through the cannibalization of iconic images taken from Western art. By appropriating and distorting the marks, figures, colors and space of these works, it creates a visual vocabulary that is reassembled, under different parameters, in new compositions. While his paintings preserve many of the ideas of the original works, they are not intended to exist as quotations, but as a kind of history of the painting process, infringing the tropes of figuration while restoring them in an unrecognizable manner. This book establishes a dialogue of the work with its historical moment through critical texts by Víctor Palacios, curator of Casa del Lago, and Willy Kautz, who was curator of the Museo Tamayo. "Everything exists in constant change; Each moment re-defines the way we perceive what has come before. We, as artists, live a fleeting moment, looking forward, but perpetually build on the remains of the ghosts of times past. We destroy, distort and bad-remember to create stories again. The myths that remain are the objectives of our inevitable looting. We plunder them with the hope of matching their power. This is the modus operandi of the artist. History - of painting, of humanity - is like the Ouroboros, a banquet in itself to stay alive. My paintings do that, and try not to stray too far from the idea that all destruction carries within itself an act of creation. They are built from the memories of the past." Omar Rodríguez-Graham studied Visual Arts at the University of Drew, New Jersey, and a Master's Degree in Painting from the Tyler School of Art, Philadelphia. He has exhibited in Mexico, the United States, Europe and South America, and his work has been selected for exhibitions such as El Hombre al Desnudo, at El Munal, (2014) and at the XV Tamayo Biennial (2012), among others. He has been a beneficiary of the Jóvenes Creadores Fonca 2006 and 2013 programs, and was selected for the book 100 Painters of Tomorrow by Thames & Hudson.
Subjects: Abstract Painting
Places: Mexico
People: Omar Rodriguez-Graham (1978-)