FEATURE STATEMENT
Davidson Galleries is pleased to share new work from Mexican artist Artemio Rodríguez. Featured are nine new linocuts from 2022 and 2023. Rodríguez balances complexity and simplicity to assemble striking scenes, figures, and stories in bold linocuts. The narratives unwind with layers of pattern, background characters, references to Mexican legends and antique European works, and mischief in every corner.
Rodríguez’s new works emphasize some of his best-loved figures – skeletons, devils, animals, children, and royalty of Michoacán – in acts of celebration, seduction, and play. He captures a multitude of experiences within one moment and one image. Entire scenes of a play, entire poems, unfold in stark black lines.
The abundant joy of a crowd is displayed in La Boda (The Wedding) from the smiling bride and groom, to the composed dancers, the engrossed musicians, and curious child peeking from behind the stage. Rodríguez leaves no detail behind, taking care to include the patterns on the pottery, the little dog, and the man on horseback in the distance. At the feast in La Frágil Vida (The Fragile Life), amidst cheers, slaps, and embraces, Rodríguez shows the motivations of every imaginable guest – those who came for the food, for the drink, for the music, for the debauchery, and those who wish they hadn’t come at all. Most of all, he captures everyone’s willingness to ignore the priest and their obliviousness to the skeleton and devil who are about to fell the tree upon which they carry out their fragile lives. Where there is joy, Rodríguez creates pure elation; where there is majesty, he creates regal power; where there is humor and hypocrisy, he is the first to point and laugh.
Please view these new works from Artemio Rodríguez alongside his other works offered by Davidson Galleries on our website here: Collection | Artemio Rodríguez or call/email to make an appointment to view them in person.
Artemio Rodríguez was born in Tacámbaro, Michoacán, México in 1972. He studied printmaking under Juan Pasco, master printmaker at Taller Martin Pescador (Kingfisher Workshop) in Mexico City. At the age of 21, Rodríguez immigrated to Los Angeles and became a printmaker at Self Help Graphics. He also co-founded La Mano Press in 2002 in Los Angeles before relocating to Michoacán in 2008 as La Mano Gráfica, a gallery and printmaking studio. Rodríguez directs the Library of Illustrated Books (Biblioteca de Libros Ilustrados, BLI) including its traveling library, the Bibliográfico, a converted 1977 Toyota, one of his many public projects and a companion to the Graficomovil, a 1948 delivery truck converted into a gallery and printmaking studio. Rodríguez is known for his linocut prints as well as his murals, vehicles, and children’s books. Influenced by both European medieval woodcuts and Mexican cultural symbolism developed by artists like José Guadalupe Posada, Rodríguez’s style emphasizes simplicity, clarity, and narrative. His images come from contemporary icons like American cartoons and chicano culture and historical traditions like mythology, surrealism, zodiac signs, and Mexican costumbrismo. A poet at heart, Rodríguez uses the physicality of the printmaking process to write stories in images. His work has been exhibited internationally; is held in the collections of many public institutions including the Seattle Art Museum, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Library of Congress, and Museo José Guadalupe Posada; and is published in the book American Dream.
