WEST VALLEY ART MUSEUM
623-972-0635SUN CITIES MUSEUM of ART
"TREE OF LIFE" SYMBOLS
AT WEST VALLEY ART MUSEUM
In an exhibition appropriately entitled "Symbols," Rolando Gonzalez-Marrero’s assemblages combine weathered, rough-hewn lumber with twigs and segments of tree branches that express the universal "tree of life" theme. With a contemporary emphasis on materials and a kind of minimalist design, Gonzalez-Marrero turns the lumber into box-like forms that contain the parts of trees like special precious elements…or like prisoners, depending on how one looks at them.
Indeed, trees are special to the artist in the symbolic, spiritual sense referring to the essence and continuity of life that trees represent. The "tree of life" is a much-used reference finding common expression in our use of family "trees" and the Christmas tree, which, being an evergreen, symbolizes the immortality of the spirit.
While Gonzalez-Marrero expresses these positive ideas in his work, he also expresses the exact opposite. These are not whole trees, full and leafy, after all, but twigs and sawn, cylindrical fragments of limbs that speak of an attack on the "tree of life".
In a sense, Gonzalez-Marrero’s tree parts are prisoners in their cell-like boxes, cut off "stubs of life" that rarely break free from the boxes’ edge. The artist even puts some of them behind chicken wire, furthering the imprisonment analogy. It is always interesting how expressive and revealing art is when we start asking what it means. The language of forms can be nearly as clearly read as our language of words.
But, life goes on, even if in a struggle for survival, as in Transmutation," where a cylindrical limb, cut off from its roots, nonetheless rises through three separate, imprisoning wooden blocks to seemingly sprout in victory – if a minor one – from the top.
Rolando Gonzalez-Marrero, now living in Miami Lakes, Florida, was born in Caracas, Venezuela. Previously a two-dimensional artist, he turned to sculpture in 1995. Influenced by composer John Cage, who was in turn influenced by the anti-authoritarianism of Dada and sub-conscious improvisation of Surrealism, it is no surprise that Gonzalez-Marrero is similarly free, spontaneous and open to the "happy accident," the unexpected development in his work. His art is in private collections in North and South America and Israel.
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West Valley Art Museum - Sun Cities Museum of Art is open 10 AM to 4 PM Tuesday through Saturday and 1 PM to 4 PM Sunday. The Museum is located at West Bell Road and 114th Ave. With five exhibition galleries, a Museum Store, Tea Room, and regularly scheduled education programs, the Museum welcomes all visitors. There is a small admission charge for non-members.
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