TO IVÁN RODRÍGUEZ, CREATION BECOMES HIS REFUGE FROM AN ILL SOCIETY, PROMOTING ALIENATION, BANALITY, FRIVOLTY AND THE DEEP UNCONSCIOUS.
CARMEN HUST | ARTICULATE #24 | JULY 2020

Several reasons impel the Spanish artist Iván Rodríguez (b. 1980) to create. To Rodríguez, creating mainly is a way of filtering out the stimuli from outside, in order to return a different interpretation, since “outside” this world and social order that we’ve created promotes (from all its corners) alienation, banality, frivolity, superficiality and deep unconsciousness. To Rodríguez this seems a rather ill society and, in that sense, creating becomes sort of a refuge to him, from which he explores everything behind that apparent reality, and give it another form. From his refuge the landscape is different. From there he sees and feels the miracle and the magic that exists in the universe, in nature, in life itself, and on the other hand, he can explore his emotions, his identity, his pain, his traumas and his psyche, hoping to heal and nurse the damages. 

At one point, in an attempt to channel and articulate his concerns, Rodríguez began his interest in photography. He found a teacher, Pablo Maria Garcia Llamas, who in addition to teach pure and simple techniques of photography, also teaches a wide world of visual and artistic references within the field. This letting Rodríguez to understand the key concepts, such as composition and their importance, in visual language. By then, Rodríguez also got introduced to image editing software, inspiring him to manipulate and alter his images. A powerful tool, enabling his notion stating that reality is not enough, and promoting a more personal terrain, making the base for more subjective and imaginative images.

In the end, in spite of the joy of photography, what Rodríguez feels most comfortable about is photomontage, digital collage and photomanipulation. He’s also passionate and admires manual collage, the finish, the textures and the physical cuts amazes him, though in his case Rodríguez has opted for digital, as it’s versatile, more comfortable and consists of endless possibilities.
 
The work of Rodríguez is both pre-thought and emerge on its own. Sometimes he gets to work without a preconceived idea. In this case he finds similarities with the manual collage process, though the process is digital, searching through a “pile” of images and cutting of all kinds, of textures, objects, characters, landscapes, letting oneself to get carried away with whatever flows.
 

When he works on a preconceived idea, the inspiration, the concept, can come from almost anything. According to Rodríguez, working regularly with this type of work, it is as if having an antenna capturing waves from everything, transforming and translating it into the language one usually uses, an “antenna transforming sensations into collages” as he puts it.

​ “[…] A musician can witness a scene of a flock of birds in a beautiful landscape and perhaps he is hearing a melody, a poet is possibly making verses, a photographer will be calibrating the light and composition and someone who does collage and photomontage well ... is cutting all that and transforming it into something new.”

In the creation of a good composition, words come to Rodríguez like harmony, balance and forms. To him, compositions has two sides:  a series of established rules that one ought to know, to be able to break them, and the intuitive part, distributing the elements within a piece in an attractive way – a harmonious and balanced way of space.
 
Rodríguez is passionate about the aesthetics of surrealism and its proposal. Currently he’s investigating the works of collage artists, such as Basque artist Joseba Elorza (Miralruido), Serbian Valentina Brostean (b. 1983), German Dada-artist Hannah Höch (1889-1978), Philadelphia based “Trash Riot”, Greek artist Eugenia Loli (1973) and the French artist Julien Pacaud.


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This article about Iván Rodríguez takes part of magazine,  ARTICULATE #24. Read, download or order your print version of the full publication below

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