Galería Juan Silió presents the first exhibition in its gallery in Madrid by Rufo Criado, an artist who has been linked to the gallery for almost two decades. A ras de suelo > < < Estructuras anómalas brings together recent pictorial work in which he focuses his gaze on the nature that evolves in the vicinity of his studio. The result are works in which he achieves a strong spatial presence through structures of a certain compositional complexity and with a contained range of colors, which represent a rationalized counterpoint to nature.
Rufo Criado’s extensive career starts from approaches close to new formalist ideas, where his paintings connect with some of the ramifications of international geometric abstraction. In them color plays an important role, becoming, through the form, the figure that reflects the energy of transformation. Forms and intensities that, far from understanding geometry as a cold language, acquire the value of representing emotional time, otherwise incalculable and escaping any established unit of measurement.
The artist himself defends that the final result of his work “should not be interpreted from a predetermined aesthetic or alignment, but rather pursues the spatial and chromatic construction of the painting as an abstract entity charged with silent intimacy, intuitive in the process of execution, and which ends up becoming a visual and introspective experience at the same time”.
In the catalog of the solo exhibition recently held at the Barjola Museum in Gijon, Alicia Murría writes[1] “[…] In the development of her language he has been absorbing different tendencies of abstraction, from the purely normative ones where the will of objectivity prevailed to those others where the subjective was present. The constructive and spatial dimension merges in a synthesis between form and color, thinking the representation from the geometry that will lead him to a constructive structure where he will add objectual elements”. Photography and video were then intermingling with painting, but with the prevalence of “[…]Schemes distilled from the observation of the landscape, of the earth, of those weeds, where the eye slips and which star in those photographs of his that speak, reflect, capture, what is unimportant, what does not compete with the great vegetation, the mighty trees, the imposing crags, or the geometry of the cultivated fields that resemble green and yellow tapestries”.
Rufo Criado’s career has been marked by his time with A Ua Crag Colectivo de Acción Artística, of which he was a founding member in 1985 and belonged to until 1994. From Aranda de Duero they defended the artistic practice from the territorial margins, and used group dynamics to form a network with which to promote, channel and disseminate the individual work of its members. A personal work sustained in the collective and that in Criado’s case is evidenced, among other aspects, in the lack of complex in incorporating other techniques and other formats – such as video or photography, digital printing or light boxes – in their processes and formalizations, without ceasing to do and talk, always, about painting.
A ras de suelo > < < Estructuras anómalas represents a continuity to his recent work, but also reaffirms a practice that has remained faithful to his artistic principles and to the territory. The accumulated knowledge of a work developed in a constant and silent way and that, from a place far from the spotlight, like the weed that manages to grow in the margins, comes out strengthened. In this way, Rufo Criado portrays the small alterations and transformations of the same place through the conformation of a language that becomes the tool with which to measure the intensity and emotional charge of the landscape.
Rufo Criado (Aranda de Duero, 1952) is a founding member of A UA CRAG Colectivo de Acción Artística (1985-1996), of which he was a member until 1994. He directed the Centro de Arte Caja de Burgos, CAB, from its opening in 2003 until the end of 2006. As an artist with an extensive exhibition career, the artworks by Rufo Criado are part of several museums and public collections such as IVAM in Valencia, ARTIUM in Vitoria, MUSAC in León, Calcografía Nacional in Madrid, Museo de Bellas Artes de Santander (MAS), Museo de Burgos, MAC in La Coruña, Centro de Arte Alcobendas-Madrid, Fundación Coca-Cola, Colección Caixabank and Colección CajaMadrid, among others. His work appears in the publication “100 Spanish artists” by EXIT Publicaciones, and in the Archivo Documental de Artistas de Castilla y León (ADACYL) of the MUSAC in León.
[1]Fragments from the text Rufo Criado. Geometría sentimental. Catalog from the exhibition Hierbajos. Paisajes a ras de suelo,
published in 2023 by Museo Barjola, Gijón (full text available at https://artecontexto.com/rufo-criado-geometria-sentimental/)
A RAS DE SUELO > < ESTRUCTURAS ANÓMALAS
November, 18 2023 – January, 20 2024
Opening on November, 18 from 11am to 2.30 pm
Rufo Criado
Galería Juan Silió
Dr. Fourquet, 20, 28012. Madrid.
Tuesday– Friday,
11am – 7pm
Saturday,
11am – 2pm