“El peso y la levedad” in conceptual images by Ángel Ricardo Rivera

“El peso y la levedad” in conceptual images by Ángel Ricardo Rivera
Santo Domingo,March 1, 2014

During a crowded ceremony that took place in the basement of the MAM, the Ministry of Culture, in coordination with the Museum of Modern Art and María del Carmen Ossaye, opened the photo exhibition “El peso y la levedad” (Weight and lightness), of visual artist Ángel Ricardo Rivera.
The event was chaired by María Elena Ditrén, Director of MAM; César Miguel, on behalf of the Friends of the Museum; Ángel Ricardo Rivera, Visual Artist; María del Carmen Ossaye, Curator of the exhibition; and Sara Hermann, Historian and Art Critic.

As she delivered the welcome speech, Ditrén highlighted: “This sample consisting of sixteen works, most of them altered photographs, poses to us, through poetic images and content, the riddle of life, of existence, of being …, as a way to redeem the past. To free it from its weight is to transform it in and through its creation”.

She commented on weight and lightness, heaviness and weightlessness, lightness, transience; the corporeal, the ethereal, the tangible and intangible. These are various ways to shape and represent abstract concepts and profound reflections on issues that are difficult to address, raised by means of images depicting the complexity of existence.

While addressing those present, Rivera explained that “in ‘El peso y la levedad’, we address the discourse of the visual, betting on the aesthetic that encloses its dialectical contradiction, while it permeates us with the sensitivities of being, by the mystery itself that life encloses, beauty, and its lightness”.

Meanwhile Hermann, defining Rivera’s exhibit, said that “his pictures have the quality of a film frame; a stark realism that precludes the building of an announced imagery. Rivera has a highly metaphorical circumspection that reverts in the epic narrative of calm situations that seem to foresee a catastrophe”.
She concluded: “Some of the pieces have the quality of dream-like landscapes, and transmit fragments of experiences at the edge of serenity or cataclysm, contradictory statements in figurative overlapping, always threatening to absorb the images that give rise to them. Hence, more than a photographer, Rivera is a composer”.

Ángel Ricardo Rivera was born in Santo Domingo in 1954. He is a professional that has been dedicated to design, creativity, and advertising since 1975. He studied Advertising Arts at the Autonomous University of Santo Domingo (UASD) in 1978, where he studied under two great Dominican teachers: National Poet, Don Pedro Mir, and the master of Dominican photography Wilfredo García.

His first formal encounter with the visual arts took place in 1984, while participating in the XVI Biennial of Plastic Arts of Santo Domingo, with a screen printing work. 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 serves as an Advertising Executive in his independent art project, the design agency GlobalConcept.

The photo exhibition “El peso y la levedad” (Weight and lightness) 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 on Ave. Pedro Henríquez Ureña, Plaza de la Cultura Juan Pablo Duarte in Santo Domingo.