Roldán, Luis

Colombian artist. Based in New York for over a decade, he has developed an unclassifiable body of work in which he expands the possibilities of drawing and painting by integrating involuntary gestures, contingencies of the process, remnants of daily work in the studio, and numerous found materials, all in relation to the exhibition space where his works unfold. In an initial stage, he created large-scale paintings featuring figures that resembled organic forms such as cells or aquatic microorganisms, as well as mechanical forms like submarines. These series of paintings and drawings led to investigations with less noble supports than drawing paper or canvas: annotations in notebooks, systematic and obsessive charcoal stains on sheets, everyday trash adhered to wood. The research on materials intensified during his residency in New York. The city became an inexhaustible source of materials that could be recycled and reinterpreted in artistic works: pencil leads, parking tickets, kardex cards, matchbooks, fax paper rolls, and many other elements began to converge in his work. It was also during this time that the exhibition space became an integral part of his work: the artworks deconstructed, and their fragments were distributed in the room, forming environments that envelop the viewer. Of particular interest are his drawings made with threads, where the line takes on a three-dimensional form while reducing itself to its most basic materiality. Starting in 2001, he began to conceive his exhibitions as "expanded works," visual and perceptual essays that include, in addition to paintings and drawings, other elements such as models, objects, plants, water, sound, and sometimes even live animals. These exhibitions are always guided by a theme that gives them meaning, but not necessarily coherence, as one of the characteristics of his work is the emergence of completely unexpected elements that take the viewer out of the comfort zone of understanding and push them to question what they see.