Carlos Susana / Valentina Rodríguez

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Carlos Susana

Venezuelan artist, son of Uruguayan parents.

Born in Caracas, he has lived and worked on Margarita Island for 21 years. This Caribbean island was practically his backyard in which he lived part of his childhood and adolescence. He has sailed along its coasts and visited all the islands that make up the state of Nueva Esparta: Margarita, Coche, Cubagua and Los Frailes.

Perhaps the experiences in this group of islands prepared him to elucidate what is today his work mostly in oil paint, assembled woods from fishing boats and other found objects, in which they are probably decanted a number of visual analysis acquired in each journey and a willingness to reinterpret the art of artisanal fishing, the activity that is a direct product of the environment where the islands tend to develop. Thus, until he was 31 years old, he set out to investigate this territory entailing the necessary conditions for creating a body of work on the Caribbean. Compiling elements, materials, resources and pictorial discourses, anecdotes and experiences that participate in the identification of the work that, from the multiplicity of contemporary possibilities, the Caribbean brings to art.

He recently completed an art residency in Salamanca, Spain, with artist Valentina Rodriguez, where they are developing a project called: “We come from the sea, we go to the country, and the reconstruction of a country”. He is currently in temporary residence and in condition of applying for asylum in the city of Madrid.

Instagram: @carlossusana_d


Valentina Rodríguez

Born in Venezuela in the city of Caracas in 1989. Graduated from the Universidad Nacional Experimental de las Artes with a mention in Painting, and from the Escuela de Artes Visuales Pedro Angel Gonzalez specializing in Sculpture.

On Margarita Island, starts the search for a language through stains and textures that try to evoke the viewer to his own memories and experiences, seeking in turn the connection between the mind, feelings and their environment. During this process, she became linked to the most distinguished group of artists of the Nueva Esparta region , participating in different exhibitions until she managed to form part of the most relevant collective exhibition held each year on Margarita Island: “With Faith in Nueva Esparta”, at the Francisco Narváez Museum of Contemporary Art, in which she received a special mention in 2018. She carries out other collective exhibitions at a national level, where she stands out the 1st Collective Exhibition of Women in the Center of Fine Arts Ateneo de Maracaibo for having been awarded with the first prize. In the year 2018 she participated in the 14th Maczul National Salon for Young Artists, in the LATENTE Collective Exhibition, in alliance with the ABRA Gallery and the Carmen Araujo Gallery, in the spaces of the Hacienda la Trinidad, and in 2019 she made an individual exhibition entitled “Naturalization” in the ABRA Gallery in Los Galpones Art Center.

Her plastic work, besides being determined by feelings and emotions, is also influenced by the environment and certain phenomena that shape it, which intervene in the process of several of the works created by the artist, recording in the same way how they originate from the medium itself, as in the case of stains formed by external agents that create oxides, mold, cracking, deterioration, degradation of materials, and all those processes that occur in the material from trying to return to its natural state and in turn looking for the connection with its true essence.

She has recently completed an art residency in Salamanca, Spain, with artist Carlos Susana, where they are developing a project called: “We come from the sea, we go to the country, and the reconstruction of a country”.

She is currently residing temporarily and applying for asylum in the city of Madrid.

Both artists will be exhibiting their joint project at the Sala Mendoza in Caracas at the end of 2020.

Instagram: @valentinarodríguez_g