Testimonials

The following testimonials consist of professional write-ups from selected Essays and Publications. We hope you find them of interest as they will provide some additional insight into George Rodez.

The Essays are provided by professionals in the art world: art critics, art historians, curators, as well as colleagues. The write-ups analyze, describe, and interpret Rodez and his art. They address topics ranging from his need and desire to create a diverse series of artworks, to a deep, investigative dive into the dream series, which came about in 2005.

The Publications are more of art critiques, mostly by those in the media, but in one case from the halls of Congress. They deal with reviews of art exhibits, individual artworks, even an entire Series, and in one case with Rodez’s philanthropic work in the community.

Essays

By: CARLOS SUAREZ DE JESUS
Independent Art Critic, January 2017

Beyond the Oedipal Complex to Umbilical Discord
Reflections Upon Life with My Mother and Muse

View Essay

By: CAROL DAMIAN, PH.D. – Art Historian
Florida International University, August 2005

Dreams or Nightmares?

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By: ANA MARIA SARLAT
Writer, Poet, and Artist, August 2005

Room with a View or the Reality of the Dream

View Essay

By: ADRIAN MORALES RODRIGUEZ
Philosopher, Curator, and Artist

Dream Symptoms

View Essay

Publications

Congress of the United States, House of Representatives, November 2006

By: Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen

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Selecta Magazine

By: Gladys Rodriguez-Dod

View Publication

El Nuevo Herald

By: Juan Carlos Perez

View Publication

Art America Magazine

By: Jaime Cabrera Gonzalez

View Publication

XS Magazine

View Publication

La Revista del Diario

By: Jesus Hernandez-Henriquez

View Publication

Wire Weekly

View Publication

Arts New View Magazine

By: Carolyn J. Bennett, Art Critic

View Publication

ON GEORGE RODEZ

By: Carlos Suarez De Jesus,
Independent Art Critic, January 2017

Beyond the Oedipal Complex to Umbilical Discord
Reflections Upon Life with My Mother and Muse

An attempt to pigeonhole the art of George Rodez is an abject exercise in intellectual bankruptcy.

Unlike an artist who toils slavishly to achieve a singular style, Rodez is a rare talent whose forte lies in the diverse imagery he creates.

Now 59, and still at work on the multiple series for which he has become known, Rodez challenges viewers with his hallucinatory figures, arresting symbolism and snippets of text that wheel between genres and attention commanding styles.

Encountering the Cuban-American’s work for the first time what springs to mind is the illusion one is experiencing a group show resulting from many different hands.

Rather instead what the viewer is seeing is the uninhibited reach of an inherently self-aware and insatiably curious mind. This painter is an explorer par excellence of subconscious realms.

It’s a gift born from a complex, multi-layered relationship with his mother that has taken Rodez a lifetime to hone.

“For as far back as I can remember, my mother always suffered and struggled with mental illness,” recollects Rodez who likens growing up under these circumstances to the hyper surreal or being swallowed by “Alice in Wonderland’s rabbit hole”.

The dynamics of their relationship left an indelible impression on Rodez marking his approach to creating art.

Throughout her lifetime Caridad Rodriguez wrestled with acute schizophrenia and dissociative identity disorder, more commonly known as multiple or split personalities.

As a teenager she actively engaged in ballet and fencing. Ironically, both skills would foreshadow a pattern for pirouetting into disparate roles while skirmishing to parry off the demons tormenting her.

For the profoundly observant Rodez, his mother’s efforts to cope with her incapacitating condition would also provide the template to explore our existential condition.

“I wanted to take all these different shifts in her psyche and use the energy I observed in her characters to interpret and incorporate them into each individual style of art I currently work with,” informs Rodez who admits engaging in his own version of an identity shuffle during the creative process.

“I won’t deny that she left a definite mark in my life, but I have made a conscious decision to taking the negative and turning it into a positive in a metaphorical way even though I do have issues that I struggle with on a daily basis as a human being,” Rodez observes.
Although Rodez asserts that he fully enjoys his Afro-Caribbean Series which explores his roots or the Elements and Values suite trough which he contrasts notions of order and chaos, it his work interpreting dreams that delivers a blow to the solar plexus.

The resulting imagery of his Dream canvasses can be described as surrealistic, Jungian or even Bunuelian.

At once exuberant and Felliniesque in their lurid nature they depict grim and somber scenes reflecting a veritable catalogue of our worst fears, flailing emotions and wildest obsessions.

Despite an underlying sense of whimsy and innocence that seeps through his compositions, the notion of the adolescent artist attempting to heal himself by curing his mother is almost palpable and heart-piercing.

“I sometimes feel that our minds aren’t yet ready to handle some our own personal truths so it attempts to send us a camouflaged message through our dreams to help us accept what is being presented before us as an internal movie which can later help us solve the puzzles,” reflects Rodez.

Stage-like and almost theatrical in appearance the rooms and hallways Rodez depicts evoke the fun-house mirrors of the mind with walls leaning everywhere at crazy angles for no apparent reason.

Some paintings reveal menacing hopscotch games in abandoned fields while others feature a judge’s gavel, a floating syringe, disembodied heads or an empty grave.

Rodez also employs text with labyrinthine intricacy to trigger associations, thoughts, and memories within the viewer he says.

“I have a tendency to take phrases, sentences, quotes, or even personal observations and put excerpts or certain words from them into some of my paintings,” mentions Rodez.

“While some of these may be self-referential, I also draw from movies, books, songs, church hymns, quotes, or anything that strikes a definite chord in my subconscious mind since I am very aware of its existence,” the artist adds.

“I consider dreams to be a gift. A gift that helps us understand our minds,” concludes Rodez.

ON HIS DREAM SERIES

Florida International University, August 2005

by: Carol Damian, Ph.D. – Art Historian

“Dreams or Nightmares?”

Despite what appears to be a narrative taking place in the paintings by George Rodez , any attempt to understand or “read” the story results in confusion. Perhaps this is just as well. Without completely understanding the source of his imagery, the viewer is allowed to interpret and identify the characters and their actions within the realm of his/her imagination and experience. The figures become everyman and everywoman and their daily travails, as odd as they may seem, become universal. Rodez conceives of the art of painting as a means of juxtaposing the recollections of dreams with the process of creativity. Just as the Surrealists did many years ago, he sets out to liberate the workings of the subconscious, disrupting conscious thought processes by the use of his own irrational imagery, and painting another reality. It was an exercise conceived of by Andre Breton, the self-appointed leader of the official Surrealist movement in 1920s Paris, whose writers and artists were trained and encouraged to harness their dream world into a surrealité of words and images. Rodez employs a similar, albeit more contemporary, method to provide an image for a state of mind out of which he could produce his work and his new reality. This reality is personal, but so provocative and strange that the viewer cannot help but get involved with the plight of the protagonists and share their lurid space.

The world that he creates is as absurd as the people who perform in its claustrophobic and multi-dimensional dramas. Imagine a scene with hallways and rooms that disappear in angles of infinity and the perspective of every object interferes with the appearance of normalcy, and that people actually exist (or perform) within these walls. The sense of chaos defies gravity and can be as disturbing as a nightmare or as humorous as a fun-house. It all depends on your point of reference, and that of the artist who is so boldly sharing something of his inner musings, but does not reveal just what that something is, or what it means. The viewer is free to interpret them as dreams or nightmares or just the bizarre results of the creativity of the artist. Although the methods for the interpretation of the dream world may be seen as a continuation of the now almost century old explorations of the Surrealists, undoubtedly new concepts about the production of art, expression of the subconscious, and far more advanced psychological analyses, inform the work of George Rodez as an artist of today who is capable of describing his own “realm of the marvelous”, as the Surrealists described their new world and their efforts at communication with the conscious by means of the unconscious.

Rodez has invented his own vocabulary of symbols, or uses rather recognizable symbols for his own personal methods of communication via his own artistic language. One is reminded of the work of Max Ernst, one of the most successful at interpreting the theory of the Surrealist image as a “pure creation of the spirit”, in the words of poet Paul Reverdy. Ernst was an artist of the unexpected and his works the appropriation from an intense imagination and repertoire of symbols. For Rodez, the symbols become the objectivation of the activity of dreaming and provide a course or transition into reality through painting. He refers to or reduplicates the condition of dreaming in images that reveal the unexpected coincidence of time and place that is part of such irrational conditions. However, in all his paintings, with all their angles of fear and danger and risk depicted in cool, dark colors, the artist wants the viewer to find a message of optimism, not tragedy. Dreams are his passage to hope.

Dream Symptoms, August 2005

by: Ana Marias Sarlat, writer, poet, and artist

ROOM WITH A VIEW OR THE REALITY OF THE DREAM

We embark on a journey to never never land, where Captain Hook is synonymous to Father Time, where the winding yellow brick roads are substituted by the ongoing hallways and doors that lead us into voids of silence and such terrible truths.

Suspended in time by the artist’s paintbrush and imagination, we cross over to a new reality, unknown and unimagined by most, but very real and palpable to the recollections of the roads already traveled by my friend and colleague George Rodez.

His paintings are windows that open onto the fragmentations of the episodes that took place during his childhood and carried over into adulthood. Trapped in this labyrinth of the unknown he draws our attention very carefully, almost hypnotically, until you are captured by the universal feeling of being lost, alone and in despair. Searching for answers and guaranteed none, he gently forces us to taste a bite out of his universe and the unwanted bad medicine so cruelly forced down his throat.

Before you criticize, analyze or speculate over his body of work, you must first be able to dissect the terrified child from the artist who challenges you to view his reality from a different perspective; ours is only a small glimpse into his private hell with the warranty of being able to walk away from his surreal landscape unharmed by his reality and converting it into an all too severely real nightmare. Before we can begin to believe ourselves capable of discussing his work, one must first examine in great detail the provenance of the work, the where’s, the why’s and because.

George Rodez is self-taught. A true artist is born, not made! Born out of chaos, hope, despair, loneliness, injustice, abuse, negligence, sadness, madness, and love. Art is the true mother of man and woman, for it is she who picks up when we fall. It is she who comforts us in silence. She is the one who knows and guides us away from the clutches of insanity. Art is our discipline and disciple. Art is the key that unlocks the door to imagination, to worlds unheard of. Art is hope! Art is the vehicle that allows Rodez to escape from the perilous landscapes of reality. Dreams, Nightmare, or all the above, Rodez Art is a silent scream, a plea for mercy, justice, and understanding.

ON HIS AFRO-CARIBBEAN SERIES/PHILANTHROPY

Congress of the United States, House of Representatives, November 2006
by: Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen

I would like to congratulate you for your wonderful exhibition “Modern Memories of Cuba.” Your work truly brings to life the traditional Cuban life-style and I am very proud of all your accomplishments as an artist.

You possess a wonderful talent that has allowed you the opportunity to participate in many exhibitions and events around the world, each time representing South Florida with the utmost professionalism and skill. The dedication you have shown to the arts, and your involvement in fund raising for charitable organizations through your generous art contributions is truly commendable. I thank you so very much for all that you have done.

Once again, allow me to congratulate you on your most recent exhibition, I am confident it was a splendid event. I encourage you to maintain your dedication to the arts and to our community; your hard work is fundamental to shaping the cultural heritage of South Florida for years to come. I wish you good luck and all the best in your future endeavors.

Selecta Magazine, September 2005

by: Gladys Rodriguez-Dod

BARCELONA … This month opens an interesting exhibition of artist George Rodez in the Pages Espai D’Art Gallery in this city. An exhibit with presenting a delicious burst of color, which transports us to that Cuba for which the artist feels so nostalgic, in which he explores and celebrates his roots. He states, “My style changed from being geometric, to one full of symbols and objects that makeup the customs and culture of my people”. Like an imaginary trip to Havana of yesteryear, with its intensity and joy, sometimes reminiscent of Matisse, the young artist offers us his memories in images of great beauty. On the other hand, he explains, “early on all my paintings had what I call ‘a watchful eye’, representing the regime and control on the island. The two blues that I use in the background, for example, represent the days and nights that pass by without change, as Cuba has stood still for forty-five years. However, in my latest works I want to highlight the changes that have yet to occur. This is my hope … and my prediction!”

Born in the United States, he lived his first years in Cuba returning to the United States in 1960. Today Rodez is established in Miami, and very soon hopes to open his own gallery on Calle Ocho. His passion for art was born at an early age, evolving and allowing him to enjoy a very personal experience, which he enjoys to the fullest. He has exhibited in different cities on both sides of the Atlantic and in December takes part in the Florence Biennale, where he will present a different series, one in which he reflects his most intimate emotions.

El Nuevo Herald

by: Juan Carlos Perez

As a mechanical draftsman he is calm and controlled, but when he paints, George Rodez unleashes his creativity and soul in a palette of vibrant colors that evokes long-forgotten episodes of his life. His roots.

Art America Magazine, 1997

by: Jaime Cabrera Gonzalez

When one enters the work of George Rodez in dissection and delves into matter and concept, elements begin to appear that not only give him a distinctive and recognizable personal stamp, but also lead us to discover the true intentions of this artist. Because once Rodez’s work is accessed, nothing is what it appears to be either. It is as if one were in front of a mirage that contains all the components of reality, but that disappoint us when we try to make use of them. And that’s where the irony lies. Through his artwork, Rodez uses the current state of affairs in Cuba and his cosmovision of the illusory.

XS Magazine (Gallery Section), 1996

Rodez’s passion for art is perhaps only matched by his political conviction to fight for human rights and freedom of expression. Rodez has put together a body of work, where the viewer is led to believe that the images before them are normal, thus, creating the illusion that things are not what they seem.

La Revista del Diario

by: Jesus Hernandez-Henriquez

The color and imagination of George Rodez makes us meditate.

Wire Weekly

George Rodez’s mission is to color the world with an explosive emotion of color, energy, movement and above all, love.

Arts New View Magazine, 1996

by: Carolyn J. Bennett, Art Critic

George’s energy is like his paintings, it flows in a very harmonious way.

Dream Symptoms, August 2005

by: Adrian Morales Rodriguez, philosopher, curator and artist

(…) Rodez paints putting art again under the light of unconsciousness, dissolving critical intelligence and appealing to dreamlike, subliminal resources or metabolic processes of internal realism. Openly symbolist, metaphorical and / or merely descriptive manifestation, almost surrealist, literary. The brush does not see everything, but neither does the eye. To look is to re-create, to make possible the miracle of the world; to recover it by losing again (…)