Artland’s Daily Art Pick
Every day collectors at Artland share variety of artworks from around the world, both from their personal collections as well as pieces they’ve seen in a recent gallery opening or got inspired by on the web.
In this feature, we will be presenting you with the highlight of the day, the most interesting, inspiring or moving piece of art posted in the app in the last days together with name of the collector who shared it.
Check the collector’s profile in the app to see their entire collection!
About the artist
The spectre of modernism and the history of abstract art are unquestionably alive in Puerto Rico-born Rafael Vega’s paintings. Within the voids and repeated geometric and linear configurations of his paintings are palpable references to the works of Lucio Fontana, Barnett Newman, Mark Rothko, Frank Stella or, for a more recent example, Tomma Abts. In spite of Vega’s undeniable commitment to abstraction, there is a rejection of all forms of imagery, even abstract imagery, in his untitled paintings. Though his work may harness a distinct formalism and a recurrent concern with how the picture plane offers illusions of simulated depth and evocations of dimensionality, Vega’s work finds its departure point from these historical referents in the form (and content) of its materiality. The visible ‘madeness’ of his paintings is paramount, as is their material playfulness and tactility.
Another decisive factor of the work is Vega’s use of Masonite, a raw, fibrous and brutish steamed wood composite, as the support for his paintings. Far from a passive surface upon which to paint, this flat, indolent material is exploited and made complicit in the painting as it is hacked at, rutted or sawn. On the one hand this reinforces the paintings’ physical, material sense by highlighting their objecthood. On the other it produces an effect, which in Vega’s words occurs as ‘formal transactions within the picture plane’.
(Text via uk.phaidon.com)