Daniel Rios Rodriguez at COOPER COLE

Artist: Daniel Rios Rodriguez

Exhibition title: Another Fire

Venue: COOPER COLE, Toronto, Canada

Date: October 25 – December 21, 2019

Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and COOPER COLE, Toronto

COOPER COLE is pleased to present a solo exhibition featuring the works of Daniel Rios Rodriguez. This marks the artist’s second solo exhibition at the gallery.

Another Fire asserts a primacy to the sun in Rodriguez’s painterly symbology.

Ecological upheaval from the latter half of the twentieth onward has multiplied, deepened, and accelerated temporalities, as a result, confusing our sense of time.¹ Ruminating on a news cycle which points to impending civilizational collapse—the menace of rising waters and temperatures, proliferating wildfires, mass extinctions—Rodriguez, in this recent body, pays tribute to the sun as our most primordial temporal compass, honouring its capacity to both guide life on Earth and, as of late, incinerate it.

Perfectly circular or herringbone shaped concrete slabs form the pictorial ground for each painting. Rope wraps the picture plane’s perimeter as both formal rhyme and framing device. Depictions of the sun vary, manifest in spiral symbols, more realist representations, or mashes of glyphs. Every work is nevertheless conceived as a kind of record of it, inflected by the artist’s stylish ingenuity, less document than totem.

Daniel Rios Rodriguez’s votive practice positions itself in an ancient lineage “of all those other creators who,” for time immemorial, “were worshipping the sun in a real way.”²

Daniel Rios Rodriguez (b. 1978, Killeen, Texas) received his MFA from Yale in 2007 and is a 2013 recipient of a Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award. Rodriguez has exhibited in solo and group exhibitions at Cooper Cole, Toronto, Canada; Nicelle Beauchene, White Columns, Martos Gallery, New York; Hannah Hoffman Gallery, Roberts & Tilton Gallery, Los Angeles; McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, USA; Lulu, Mexico City, Mexico; Galeria Fortes D’aloia & Gabriel, São Paulo, Brazil; Kerlin Gallery, Dublin, Ireland and has forthcoming exhibitions at San Antonio Museum of Art, and Artpace, San Antonio, USA. Rodriguez lives and works in San Antonio, USA.

[1] David Farrier, Anthropocene Poetics: Deep Time, Sacrifice Zones, and Extinction(Minneapolis; London: University of Minnesota Press, 2019), 6.
[2] Artist’s notes

Daniel Rios Rodriguez, Another Fire, 2019, exhibition view, COOPER COLE, Toronto

Daniel Rios Rodriguez, Deep State, 2019, Oil on wooden panel with rope, 17 x 14 x 4 in (43.2 x 35.6 x 10.2 cm)

Daniel Rios Rodriguez, La cura, 2019, Oil on concrete with rope, 19.3 x 13 x 2.5 in (49 x 33 x 6.4 cm)

Daniel Rios Rodriguez, Blaze, 2019, Oil on concrete with rope, 13 x 13 x 2.5 in (33 x 33 x 6.4 cm)

Daniel Rios Rodriguez, Pica Pica, 2019, Oil on concrete, 13 x 13 x 2.5 in (33 x 33 x 6.4 cm)

Daniel Rios Rodriguez, Amazonia, 2019, Oil on concrete with rope, 13 x 13 x 2.5 in (33 x 33 x 6.4 cm)

Daniel Rios Rodriguez, Envidio, 2019, Oil on concrete with rope, 13 x 13 x 2.5 in (33 x 33 x 6.4 cm)

Daniel Rios Rodriguez, Bruisers, 2019, Oil on concrete, 13 x 13 x 2.5 in (33 x 33 x 6.4 cm)

Daniel Rios Rodriguez, Mister Sol, 2019, Oil on terracotta, 13 x 13 x 2.5 in (33 x 33 x 6.4 cm)

Daniel Rios Rodriguez, Night Heat, 2019, Oil on concrete with rope, 13 x 13 x 2.5 in (33 x 33 x 6.4 cm)

Daniel Rios Rodriguez, Helios, 2019, Oil on concrete with rope, 13 x 13 x 2.5 in (33 x 33 x 6.4 cm)

Daniel Rios Rodriguez, Hottest Parts, 2019, Oil on concrete with rope, 13 x 13 x 2.5 in (33 x 33 x 6.4 cm)

Daniel Rios Rodriguez, The Plaint, 2019, Oil on concrete with rope, 13 x 13 x 2.5 in (33 x 33 x 6.4 cm)

Daniel Rios Rodriguez, Ojo, 2019, Sand, oil, copper, rope and glass on terracotta, 13 x 13 x 2.5 in (33 x 33 x 6.4 cm)

Daniel Rios Rodriguez, Oro, 2019, Oil on concrete with rope, 13 x 13 x 2.5 in (33 x 33 x 6.4 cm)

Daniel Rios Rodriguez, Untitled, 2019, Oil stick on paper, 17 x 11 in (43.2 x 27.9 cm)