VARGAS-SUAREZ UNIVERSAL
Эльдорадо (El Dorado)
28 August - 25 October 2010

artists on artists visit+discussion, Saturday 9 October 2010, 4:30 pm

Click here for a brief video tour of the exhibition and the artist at work

Эльдорадо (El Dorado) brings together a selection of new paintings and site-specific wall drawings by the Brooklyn-based artist, Rafael Vargas-Suarez (aka Vargas-Suarez Universal), who was born in Mexico City (1972) and raised in Houston, Texas.

Growing up in close proximity to the Johnson Space Center cultivated an acute interest in the artist for the technical and visual languages of NASA. Studies in astronomy and art history as well as medicine contributed to a distinctive dialogue between art and science in the imagery of his work, which primarily consists of large-scale wall drawings, paintings, drawings, and photographs.

In much of the recent work, VSU employs an uncommon medium, vacuumized aluminum thermal blanket, in addition to oil paints. Just as a new series is purposely titled with the Cyrillic letters that appear in much of the space imagery the artist studies, this special material directly relates to his subject matter of space stations, rockets, and satellites as a structural/design component. More importantly, it serves as a symbol for the legendary South American “Lost City of Gold”, transmuted by the artist to represent a contemporary “El Dorado”: Space.