Black Cloths, Red Cloths, White Cloths

Black Cloths, Red Cloths, White Cloths

With a name that is so propitious for the enjoyment of the good eroticist art, Villa Manuela has hit the target in hosting this show by Rubén Rodríguez under the fruity title of PAÑOS NEGROS PAÑOS ROJOS PAÑOS BLANCOS (Black Cloths, Red Cloths, White Cloths).
A chromatic sequence that evokes the Lorca of the Romancero Gitano, this title could also refer to the letter of the year, to the attributes of Elegguá… But the truth is that it is a mere pretext to enable the artist to surprise us.
And it is because this exhibition grants continuity and enriches the previous Reflejos I y II (Reflexes I and II) as well as the very recent Proverbios e Iniciaciones (Proverbs and Initiations), all of them united under a common denominator: the sexed condition of the painting representation. There is a pleasure shared with the spectator in the repetition or reiteration by Rubén of those silhouettes that, holding up their genitals, end in zoomorphic allusions. There is a hidden, latent sense… of pleasure shared by those of us who feel attracted by the magnetism of his work, explicitly eroticist but always enigmatic, profound, turgid…
I do not fear to repeat myself when saying that because it is essentially beautiful, Rubén’s art does not deserve prudishness, not even an academic one, when commenting it. Again I quote the art psychoanalyst David Freedberg and his studies on history and theory of the answer: The possession of what is represented is the eroticist base of true understanding.
It would suffice to imagine that, by welcoming Rubén’s art, Villa Manuela has become for an instant one of those Pompeian houses where the eros was shared among all like air.
Or a cavern on whose walls next to bisons, wolves, wild boars and other beast man painted the erection if his sex with the same curiosity that he lit fire on a torch.