Rodrigo Cass
PRESS RELEASE
Rodrigo Cass: figures, gestures and passages
15 January – 19 February 2019
Anthony Meier Fine Arts is pleased to present figures, gestures and passages, the first solo exhibition of Rodrigo Cass in the United States.
The title, figures, gestures and passages, is a nod to Robin Evans’ essay Figures, Doors and Passages, which compares paintings and architectural plans in order to understand the relationship between spatial organization and social interactions. In this new body of work, Cass utilizes minimal concrete gestures drawn onto canvas, likened to text on the page or a complex system of corridors creating a metaphysical landscape to be explored.
Counter-Composition (exist) sets the stage for the exhibition – the hues from the photograph’s rainbow prism are cast onto the gallery walls creating passage from one work to another as if there was no beginning or end. The six monochromatic paintings installed in the gallery hallway appear as if they have been torn from the prism, rebounding unity and separation. The twelve paintings that comprise Passages in the main gallery form a calendar - the concrete gestures appear to be an emblem of a great theory left to be decoded by each visitor.
Near the fireplace rests a large green painting, Loving Passages, reminiscent of a school chalkboard. The lesson is a loving affective geometry akin to the relationship of the house with those who live in it. Whereas, The Outline of a Theory hangs from the ceiling at the gallery entrance painted with a fixed plan as if it is reflecting the traversed path below.
Cass’s video, On Handling, projects six colors superimposed in layers onto a linen and bronze sculpture placed inside the fireplace. The artist’s hand moves in gestures like a brush, revealing layer after layer. The primitive, repetitive gestures become the author of a new passage.
Rodrigo Cass (b. 1983) lives and works in São Paulo, Brasil. Cass received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Faculdade Santa Marcelina in São Paulo, Brasil. Cass has exhibited at Centro Cultural São Paulo, São Paulo; Fortes D’Aloia & Gabriel, Galpão, São Paulo; Galeria de Arte Copasa, Belo Horizonte; Galeria Fortes Vilaça, São Paulo; Galerie MDM, Paris, France; Galpão Fortes Vilaça, São Paulo; Meyer Riegger, Karlsruhe, Germany; and MALG - Museu de Arte Leopoldo Gotuzzo, Pelotas.
Selected public collections include Casa do Olhar Luiz Sacilotto, Santo André, Brasil; Fundação Rômulo Maiorama, Belém, Pará; MAP - Museu de Arte da Pampulha, Belo Horizonte, Brasil; Pinacoteca de Piracicaba, Piracicaba, Brasil; andTBA21 – Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary, Vienna, Austria.
