MadArt continues to hit it out of the park with cool, tactile, inhabitable installations. Their latest exhibition, Reflect and Gather, features work by Seattle-based ceramic sculptor George Rodriguez. During his residency at the South Lake Union gallery, he has created a series of compact rooms composed of more than 1,000 handmade clay tiles.
Each room has a distinct color, texture, and method of lighting. They are beautifully ornate spaces of contemplation. Rodriguez's work is heavily informed by his own Mexican heritage and well as the histories and mythologies of other cultures. Reflect and Gather also includes a wet-clap room where visitors are encouraged to leave their own physical traces, to record their own movement through space and time.
Besides beautifully ornate rooms, a giant ceramic mariachi also greets you when you enter the space. The figures (all together called Instrumental Divide) were part of his MFA thesis work at the University of Washington and were first shown at the Henry Art Gallery. They are beautiful and a little intimidating, if only because of their larger than life size and material—but that's also what makes them so impressive The nine of them are dressed in charro outfits and playing their traditional instruments. To Rodriguez mariachis were an integral part of his childhood in El Paso, Texas, present at large gatherings.
Reflect and Gather closes this Saturday, May 18.
