Promete

Wretchedness precedes a promise. In burning silences where hope festers, heads are bowed and palms clenched up to oblivious skies.

Promete expounds on perplexities of desperate longing, of frenzied clutching in lieu of tangible progress. Promete -- to promise – harks back to Rodriguez’s Chavacano roots, to growing up in Zamboanga City where both societal status and religion cut a gaping divide that only distance and introspection divulge. The exhibit is, in a sense, the artist’s self-scrutiny; methodical pen and brush strokes are a form of desperate worship as
much as they are of systematic condemnation.

The Politics of Longing
Rodriguez’s meticulous pen and ink details painstakingly capture the cacotopia of faith in “Garden of Unearthly Desires,” a candidly Boschian rendition of the grotesque spectacle of devotion where the manufactured idea of paradise is matched in idiocy by resulting exhibitions of reverence. Veneration is a performance as much as infallibility is a farce. In this obscene landscape, the unmovable taunt with contrived indifference.

The destitute kneel in the belief that suffering is a prerequisite to dangled salvation, their fervent faith sustaining the powerful. Uncertainty blooms in a morphology of writhing limbs in “Dance of the Anguished,” where the symphony of misery is dehumanized bythe logic of geometry: it is as painful as it is expected. But faith largely relies on myths of deliverance and therefore balks under the gravity of unfulfilled promises in “Weight of the Wind,” for the responsibility of belief falls on those who contort, just as the idea of rain rests on the ardent hope of those who dance.

Known for his brand of social realism that centers on the absurdity of human existence eternally trapped in nuances of politics and power, Rodriguez traverses murky silences in dynamics of society– the promisor blunders as the hopeful squirm in the agony of waiting. In works from the ‘Asa’ series, postures of yearning are inevitably trapped in the inanity of desire. This series of semi-sculptural pen and ink drawings from the artist’s collection probes the sanctity of devotion in the grip of futility.

The Paradox of Self
As the canvases smolder with red-orange undertones, questions arise and disturb: are the quiet seething rather than cowering? Are the mighty paralyzed rather than supine? Identity dissolves into hollow patterns in “Anonymous II” as bodies become fragmented puzzles in search of coherence. But it is precisely in these fissures of despair that the will to assemble persists, albeit muted by doubt. Hesitance is confused for anticipation.

In contemplating nightmarish dystopias, Rodriguez scrutinizes structures of dominance held captive by their own authority. Unyielding horsemen in “Monumental Entropy” epitomize architectures of empires that attempt to merge but melt with their own weight – grandeur blooms with decay as corporations dissolve but refuse to crumble. Turmoil, thus, is not exclusive to the powerless. Adam, a parable of possession, is entangled in an unsettling mix of manic triumph and delusion in “Inheritance of the First Man,” perforce wearing his arrogant, idiotic grin, eternally trapped in his own hubris. Presupposed wisdom is an insult as the powerful eternally fumble.

Eminence offers no reprieve. In the unforgiving dichotomy of dominion and desolation, empires have none to plead to but their own fragility. “Petition of the Unmoved” embodies society ensnared by its own systems. It is a testament to the realization of vulnerabilities, and a contemplation of the ironies of its own existence: jagged monoliths pierce through and take control as thought is wryly debased in a contemptible figure bloated by its own consumption. The infallible kneels and prays for its own salvation.

Promete invites the viewer to relish in both reverence and disillusionment, and to ponder contradictions in the rhetoric of absurdity. Geometric rigidity intersperses with quivering bodies as the indestructible feigns complacence. In Rodriguez’s persistent interrogations of societal systems and politics of the self, the sacrosanct is as steadfast as it is weary.