Colonial Suites
In this series, I use different areas of the Santa Catalina Palace –the oldest executive mansion in the Americas – as a setting and reference, spaces characterized by the abundance of ornaments and exuberant furniture. These rooms show styles that represented the aesthetics, the lifestyles of different wealthy societies - and protagonists - in history. They embody and reflect the condition of absolute power, as well as the foreign influences on tastes and fashion that directly influenced the society of the time.
My intention is to manipulate the perception of the aesthetic values we inherit, especially those that are attributed to dominant structures - whether in art and design, or in politics and religion. I try to represent all this with a series of fictitious, changing, transforming, forgotten scenarios, some violent, neglected and vandalized, others challenging the natural ecological succession in which nature reclaims its space and the cycles return to their beginning.
I am interested in transgressing places or historical buildings associated with the structures of power in Puerto Rico and the Caribbean. Architecture from the colonial period usually harbors and exemplifies absolute political power. These contradictory associations, as a fictitious space of political and cultural power, contribute various absurd associations that allow me to develop an aesthetic framed and diluted between fiction and political failure. Dystopic / post apocalyptic visions along with Latin American surrealism, provide the framework to construct a visual essay of spaces of submission, opulence, violence, incapacity, beauty and nostalgia. This functions as a spatial synthesis of the colonial Puerto Rican, and wider post-colonial Caribbean, circumstance which allow the observer to reconstruct and advance a new interpretation ... or posthumous vision.
Flores para Fortaleza, 2016, oil on canvas, 50” x 71”, Marie Lynn Arrieta collection.
Governor’s Garden, 2017, oil on canvas, 48” x 48”, private collection.
Governor’s Mansion – Mirror Room, 2017, oil on canvas, 48” x 38”, artist’s collection.
Terraza colonial, 2017, oil and gold powder pigment on canvas, 39″ x 62″, private collection.
Governor’s Mansion – Blue Room, 2017, oil on canvas, 40” x 40”, Vales Lezcano Collection.
Trampantojo, 2017, oil and gold pigment powder on canvas, 48 ¾” x 59 ¾”, private collection.
The New Mirror, 2017, oil and gold pigment powder on canvas, 89″ x 54″, Roberto Trápaga collection.
Found Bourgeoise Object V, 2017, oil and powdered gold pigment on canvas, 12″ x 9″, private collection.
Found Bourgeoise Object II, 2017, oil and powdered gold pigment on canvas, 11″ x 11″, private collection.
Found Bourgeoise Object III, 2017, oil and powdered gold pigment on canvas, 8″ x 8″, artist’s collection.
Found Bourgeoise Object VI, 2017, oil and powdered gold pigment on canvas, 12″ x 9″, private collection.
Mirror Room – Sketch, 2017, oil and powdered gold pigment on canvas, 12″ x 9″, private collection.
Detail – Mirror Room, 2017, oil and powdered gold pigment on canvas, 12″ x 9″, private collection.
Sacrifice Curtain, 2017, oil and powdered gold pigment on canvas, 12″ x 9″, artist’s collection.