“El peso y la levedad”, by Ángel Ricardo Rivera at the MAM

“El peso y la levedad”, by Ángel Ricardo Rivera at the MAM
Santo Domingo, January 31, 2014

The Ministry of Culture, in cooperation with the Museum of Modern Art (MAM) and María del Carmen Ossaye, will open the photography exhibition “El peso y la levedad” (Weight and lightness), by visual artist Ángel Ricardo Rivera, on Tuesday, February 25th, at 7:00 pm, at the MAM.

The exhibition will be based on altered photography, with conceptual images that attempt to respond or question the philosophical concept of the antagonisms of weight and lightness. This was the premise of Milán Kundera in his famous work “La insoportable levedad del ser (The unbearable lightness of being).”

For Rivera, one of the consequences we will face during the XXI century is the prominent role of photography, its release, its new space, its time, its shape, stealing the place that painting held during the last century, as a result of the technological and visual advancement of communications.

The development of the powerful visual alphabet that is now the everyday experience of those carrying a camera, a cell phone, is the new challenge for professional visual artists, to be updated, nurtured, of the qualitative and quantitative leap in this new computer era that leads photography and film to unimaginable forms of expression. In “El Peso y la levedad” one can hold onto this new aesthetic, releasing it from the frame, and trying a three-dimensional approach.

Ángel Ricardo Rivera was born in Santo Domingo in 1954. He is a professional dedicated to the design, creativity, and advertisement since 1975. He studied Advertising at the Autonomous University of Santo Domingo (UASD) in 1978, where he participated in lectures by two Dominican true masters: National Poet, Mr. Pedro Mir, and the master of Dominican photography Wilfredo García.

His first formal encounter with the plastic arts took place in 1984, when he participated in the XVI Santo Domingo Plastic Arts Biennial, with a silkscreen work. Since then, he has participated in biennials, contests, and solo and group exhibitions in the United States, Puerto Rico, and the Dominican Republic, where he currently resides. He currently serves as Advertising Creative Executive in his independent arts project, the GlobalConcept design agency.

The photography exhibition “El peso y la levedad” will be open to the public from Tuesday to Sunday, from 9:00 am to 5:00 pm, at the Museum of Modern Art of the Dominican Republic, located at Av. Pedro Henríquez Ureña, Plaza de la Cultura Juan Pablo Duarte, in Santo Domingo.