In Your Own Image: The Best of Bert Rodriguez. Greatest Hits Vol. 1

Bert Rodríguez. In Your Own Image (Paris), 2008. Mixed media on postcards. Set of 134 (4" x 6" each). Courtesy the Artist and Fredric Snitzer Gallery

Bass Museum of Art - Miami

April 17-August 16, 2009

By Janet Batet

With the arrival of spring, everything is reborn and so it goes with Bert Rodriguez who after recovering from an accident pretends to be a tree buried in the ground and delights us with artworks -or apples?- always in progress.

The constitutive ongoing notion that typifies most of Rodriguez’ production contrasts with his retrospective obsession on which the name of the present exhibition is based. Back in 2000, Miami-Dade College hosted Bert Rodriguez’ A Pre-career Retrospective, where the artist shared with the visitor an inventory of ordinary objects (a toothbrush or childhood drawings) that guided Rodriguez into the world of arts.

Participating in the extended notion of art that typifies this conceptual Miami-based creator, “In Your Own Image: The Best of Bert Rodriguez Greatest Hits Vol. 1″ includes a vast number of media such as sculpture, web-based artwork, neon signs, installations, videos, C-prints and performance. 

Exploring the relationships between art and artifact, Me and the others, artistic genius or ordinary people, Classic Art and Contemporary Art, Bert Rodriguez recreates a fabulous ambiance propitious to analysis and not devoid of humor. 

The series of works entitling the exhibition: In Your Own Image, 2008, plays with the boundaries between Me and the others. The series is comprised of 134 postage-paid postcards, all with the same image of Rodriguez and includes instructions inviting the public to complete the image and then mail it back to the artist. Once in the gallery, the cards carefully placed at eye level in the share room with Where My Eyes Meet You, 2005, comprised of a simple white neon light. The length of the neon tube has been determined by the scope of Rodriguez’ peripheral vision and hung at exactly his eye level.

This oeuvre is cited in Where My Eyes Meet You (V.ll), 2006, which contrasts Classic and Contemporary arts. Rodriguez picked up six canvases from the museum collection, placing them on a wall. Then, with a razor blade, the artist traced a straight line -once again at his eye level- connecting the artworks, the visitor and himself. The crossed eyes between artist, visitors, and characters on the canvases as well as the cutting action lead to a reflection on concepts such as Art, Art History, artistic genius versus ordinary people, and the museum setting.

Weeping Monolith, 2008, introduced to us at the Miami Beach Convention Center during Art Basel last year, is a lyrical minimalist Virgin. Comprised of an ample black foam rectangle, this adorable icon -loaded with all the religious spirit that inhabits the museum’s classical collection- stands in front of us crying in ecstasy: the monolith sheds a tear every 30 seconds.