Interview by MIlagros Bello

By Milagros Bello, PHD
Curator of the show

MB: How Dominican Republic forms an epicenter in you work? How is it present in your work?
RB: I was born there, I lived there, and it has to be present. The tropic has influenced me mostly in the choice of colors. There is a boldness in my work in the way I apply the texture on pigments, and the oversized formats that I tend to choose. Most importantly, it is the expressionistic sense that there is in my work, sometimes exuberant and vitally oriented that is also the way of the people in the Dominican Republic. They are extrovert. Generally speaking they laugh a lot, they take life in an optimistic way, they have a light attitude; in a way they don’t take life too seriously, including myself, I am from Dominican Republic. We are outgoing persons who do not stop on obstacles, and do not put bad faces on the dark side of life.
One example on how Dominican Republic has touched my work was last February when I attended the Punta Cana last day of the Carnival. I watched closely the Parade for the closing of the Carnival. I was fascinated with all the amazing and beautiful colors in the carriages, in the dresses, in the ribbons. There were thousands of colorful ribbons weaving from the posts in the streets, flowing with the breeze. They looked like dancing sculptures. The effect was that of a dream like landscape.
MB: In your paintings why do you do huge figure outlines sometimes covering the canvasses from top to bottom? There are paintings where we observe elongated figures of women almost de-figured and very expressionistic.

RB: I like to deconstruct the woman’s figure. I segment the figure sometimes spotlighting only the legs. I emphasize the slimness of women as it is in fashion, and in the commands for beauty. At the beginning I was concerned with the world of modeling and advertising. You know that in modeling one of the most important part is the length and slimmed shape of the legs. In my paintings I exaggerate them as an ironical reference to the hardship of models in the highly competitive world of fashion.

MB: I see branding elements in your paintings such as fashion brand purses or high heels.

RB: I use Prada purses but also Christian Louboutin shoes! The upscale brand feminine accessories are real works of art! The designs are sublime! Fashion designers each day are becoming more and more creative. In our world today art fuses with commercial products in creative manners; in other times they were considered simple merchandises separated from the “high art”. Artists and very talented art designers shape fashion products as if they would be for a Fashion Museum or an Art Institute. In fact, many commodities are nowadays art that just they locate in the fashion market.
You can realize these “market artifacts” if we can call it in this manner, they are key visual references in my work. This could be seen also as a sort of an autobiographical reflection in the work.
But it is not only the apparent frivolity involved in here, it is that the paintings in their core establish a connection with the world of women. Women in her pursue of happiness through beauty and perfection. Anyway, all women in this world one way or the other always connect with the desire of looking good. That is just a simple truth behind all the paraphernalia of the world of fashion and design even if you are in tribal Africa or the Amazonian jungle there always exists decoration of the face and body.
MB: In some of your paintings you create a more abstract approach with highly expressionistic and gestural lines. How do you work from abstract to figurative or vice versa?

RB: I like the idea of joggling between figurative and abstract works. It is more exciting. My method of working is based more on improvisation; the surprise element that is involved in this process is very appealing to me. I like to confront the uncertainty and the thrill of what is to come.

MB: In Wishful Thinking (2010) painting you have created a figure of a sensual woman in a frontal composition. You have eliminated her face spotlighting her feminine areas through a strong pink skin. How did you conceive this work?

RB: I saw a magnificent photograph in a magazine that attracted my attention, I don’t remember which one was it, perhaps it was Playboy, or Vogue, or any other women connected magazine which always relates to the feminine world even if it is not sometimes with the best outcome or approach!! I could not resist its red colors, the sensuality of the model’s skin, and her eroticism. In a way, those magazines defines stereotypes that impose women’s profiles for consumerism. As in the magazines, I try to focus on the traits of women of our times, and their pronounced eroticism. The erotic aura is always attached to beauty and seduction. Meaning, using beauty/eroticism/seduction as a means of power. In the painting I eliminated the woman’s head, like not having any specific identity or personality; it is a woman as a prototype for beauty. I also have done it in another paintings. Only presenting fragments of the body in the highlight of the indistinctiveness of women casted out in the turbulent realms of cultural modes and social forms.

MB: In 2011 you have created a very different approach to the canvas. In the Diary of a Shopaholic Series, I see the works Drama Queen or Crazy About You, in which you have used a bright and contrasting palette but you have also added to the surface of the canvass all types of feminine accessories, from lipsticks to women’s bloomers, carnavales que sunglasses and all kind of fantasies. Why this big change is and what did you want to express with this almost chaotic visual composition of the work?

RB: It all started with sculpture. At that moment I was doing two strong series Beautiful Trash and Golden Trash in which I used found objects of all types, not only feminine paraphernalia but artificial and natural plants, and artificial animals. I added resin and oil pigments. The practice of using so many varieties of elements in my tridimensional works gave me the thirst to go with them into the canvasses. The tactile strong texture of these objects were seductive and sometimes overwhelming. The works are intentionally intense and bewildering, also chaotic like you said. It isn’t that a reflection of our times?

MB: In the same series, there are Cool Mary and Red Thoughts artworks. What can you tell me about them?

RB: Cool Mary is a symbolic title, there is no Mary in this piece, it consists of a collage and acrylic painting in which I used cut-out photographs of beautiful women from magazines, fake jewelry, feminine accessories and other elements that attracted my attention such color cellophane papers to add tactility and glare to the surface.

Red thoughts as the title indicates is a total red surfaced painting with collage of memorabilia: mirrors, red bird, cut out paper magazine photos. It dominates the red color as a cultural kitsch reference to love and romance. It is an emotional piece with a Victorian feel to it.

MB: You have also some small format sculptures, Fragment Series, which form an installation placed over a mirrored platform or in pedestals. They include “Yadro” like figurines, fake jewelry, and all other types of objects plastered out on Styrofoam irregular tridimensional shapes. The pieces have a flashy effect. How did you get to them?

RB: I am a junk collector, I have a peculiar connections to objects. If I had a choice I would have a huge warehouse just to store them as precious items overloaded with stories. Lots of these collectibles have no actual monetary value; my friends give me things they do not want anymore or I buy them in antique and second hand shops. The more antiquated and tacky the better! They add character to the works and they set mental connections to the viewer and their own personal stories. But they also mark the period that we are living in, with such a strong drive to consumerism and accumulation.
Fragment Series is an installation formed by many individual pieces made out on a very tactile Styrofoam material in which I have incrusted and gathered a delirious accumulation of all types of unimaginable tacky objects as in a reference for our dislocated shopping spree world.

MB: There is also another series of sculptures less colorful, perhaps very dramatic, the Beautiful Trash Series, they look as if the material was burned out. Why black, why this dramatic look? Why the title?

RB: The title refers to the objects I used to make these series of sculptures, must of it are recycled materials and unwanted trash that hang around people’s houses without known what to do with them. It is very exciting to be able to utilize something that is already discarded and find a destination in my artworks. That is the title all about, Beautiful Trash. It is a kind of a mythical “beautified” trash.
The drama effect you refer to is due to the fact that the sculptures are mostly painted in black as a burned out or destroyed material, except for some color splash from a plastic flower, or from some natural branches, or from the color reflections of a piece of plastic or a red high heel.
MB: On the opposite side there are the Golden Trash Series that are finished all in gold color!! Perhaps as an allusion to wealth? Or to the King Midas in an ironic metaphor?

RB: These series followed the BEAUTIFUL TRASH series. I was getting tired of the black and wanted a more reflective surface. The discarded elements in black felt a bit limiting; I wanted the opposite, I felt like the Alquemist!! I painted everything in gold, from plastic bottles to stuffed animals, to women dummies used Gold color representing an allusion to the material goods and the excessive possessions in our society. Nowadays everything is merchandized, commoditized. We live in an extreme materialistic mind frame where even love is subject to material value.

MB: A very peculiar piece is Marlene Dietrich, an installation made out with fabrics, fine shoes, women dresses, as an evocation of a walking closet of an elegant and rich woman? Explain me about it.

RB: This piece depicts the ritual that women have to go through on a regular basis to get to the best look. There are the fashion shoes, the jewelry, the dresses, all the ingredients to get to the outmost beautiful appearance. I called it “Marlene Dietrich” just to refer to the star prototype in our collective minds. I like the character, and her personality suits the piece.
I was interested in a sculptural installation that could be more informal in the arrangement of its elements. Each time I re-install the piece in another location the order of elements could vary. It is very colorful but at the same time very dramatic, as Dietrich was.

MB: You have the astonishing sculpture Sunday Supper in which we find on top a fake rooster seated on a mixture of all kind of artificial fruits, vegetables, plants, leaves, flowers; the materials are all painted with contrasting colors; the whole complex visual compound is sitting on a large cup as if it is ready to be served on a table. This piece resembles a
Contemporary still life performed as a chaotic inedible plate; its title sounds ironic as poignantly alluding to a family Sunday Supper. What can you tell us about this piece?

RB: This piece was selected for a juried show at the Bakehouse /Miami show titled The Seven Capital Sins. I named into the category of the sin “gluttony” which is a very popular subject in our days. We have so many people with eating disorders, addicted to food to the extreme to die that eating has become a deep health issue, sadly stimulated by our profuse advertising of junk and cheap food. The piece represents exactly what it looks like, a huge exaggerated, and grossly display of foodstuff.
At the all in my work comes to a reflection on our environment and of our world.

March 2011

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