Daniel Rios Rodriguez at Artpace
Daniel Rios Rodriguez:
Daniel Rios Rodriguez was overdue for a hometown show. With the exception of a small presentation at the McNay in 2015 and only a handful of group shows otherwise, his rough-hewn, beautifully modernist paintings were somehow absent on San Antonio gallery and museum walls. Artpace changed this with Bruisers, Rios Rodriguez’s deserved first solo show in the region. Featuring drawings, sculptures, paintings, and works that were a combination of all three, the show was perfectly sited in the organization’s Hudson Showroom, which features windows that bathe the space in natural light.
Rios Rodriguez’s paintings, many of which are intimate in scale, are funny and serious, figurative and abstract. Some of his paintings reveal themselves immediately, while others take a slower burn, but the most important part is that they all truly work on some level; it doesn’t matter if he’s painting on a terracotta sun face or on a discarded scrap of wood. The cherry on top of Rios Rodriguez’s assemblages is his artist-made framing: Wood, rope, painted nails, and other elements combine to make his pieces unique through and through.
