Rorschach, by R10

Excerpts from Are Kings free? (Five questions for R 10)

Rufo Caballero

1

The trendy spirit has decreed that discussions on whether or not design is art are already dated, worn out (…);

However, some discussions have been going on throughout the whole history of culture for a reason. Their recurrence is based on some deeper reason. An old wise thought says that behind a stereotype there is something deeper. Juicier. And one needs to know how to make good use of it. (…) What’s the argument that gets to define, definitely, the art design? The strict pact with orders, the subordination to the consignor, the tight negotiation with the demand? This would mean not knowing what the History of art has been. The sacred art of painting, where there was some, has always had to deal with orders. Both easel and mural painting. The Sistine Chapel was made by order (…) There has been no art without negotiation, without strains, without resistance. In fact, this dilemma gives rise to one of the great topics of art itself.

Of course, with the emergence of technical arts, of the reproduction era, of the crisis of the aura, of systematic attempts to democratize the access to the cultural capital, there was an outburst of a group of cultural genres and expressions that depend much more on orders. The cultural industry turned traditional Aesthetics upside down. In those cases, would it be necessary to quit on art as a guarantee of a less dramatic link with the consignor? Or, the other way around: Wouldn’t it be that the concept of art is constantly redefined, that its boundaries become wider, that it suffers a metamorphosis, that it is transformed to fit in with the present, that it negotiates, that it understands new time vectors? (…)

2

Therefore, when a prestigious designer tries to step into the realm of “art;” when he tries to enroll in the macro-sacred field of fine arts, I get a little nervous. Because I feel that we are losing ground; that we go back to not understating the dynamics of the fortunate cultural democratization of the times we are living and have lived for decades. It’s like if the 19th century beat the 21st century on a Scrabble game. (…) On the other hand, on behalf of the same ductility or attempts to understand The Another or The Other, I wonder: Why not? (…) There are inner needs of expression that have nothing to do, at least not directly, with the epistemological signs of the epoch, with the great artistic collisions, with ­–legitimate or lesser­—mobility among genres. It has to do with the inner propulsion that is expressed, or else, the creator ends up on the couch of a psychotherapist. 

3

After leading a rising career as a designer in the 2000’s (rising in terms of sobriety, which made it carefully vertiginous), Jorge Rodriguez Diez (R10) decided to go for what he considered “art.” (…) During the 2000’s, R 10 became one of the most brilliant designers reaching a style based on design itself, without the need to use other more “beautifully artistic” tags: the weird combination of his German cultural knowledge addicted to order, geometry and the most Spartan austerity, and his essentially Cuban-like features addicted to self-confidence, the most (well-meaning) intentional irony, and keen to the least solemnity possible; the minimal sobriety of a graphic figuration away from conventions and pretentions, which is supported by a huge amount of cultural and style-ascendant sources; the subtlety in the induction of senses and in the non-at-all correspondence between meanings and signifiers (beautifully expressed in that highbrow poster: La cosa está clarísima), that redounded in the end to a R10 hallmark, in a R10 manner of seeing the artistic side of design. To me, that was enough; but not to Jorge. Where R10 rules, Rufo has no sway. Jorge felt, in the middle of 2009, like no more. Like he had to free himself from the tides. He cried out for more freedom than the one imposed by himself in the field of design. To hell with demand, orders, consignor; He needed to shout out that he was mocking, for the first time as much as he wanted, at the aesthetic and commercial dictatorship over his shoulders. No more. With his exhibition entitled Rorschach (at the Visual Arts Development Center, November, 2009) he took a leap into what he considered was fair. He was emancipated. He created at last what he pleased. And he was within his rights, certainly.

Truth is that it had been long since an exhibition last gave rise to such a strong theoretical and aesthetic discussion in Havana.

Without giving up on the design tools (he wouldn’t have to: if a man is his past, how much more an artist can be), that is, appealing to a graphic concept teemed with suggestive visual insinuations and plastic solutions linked to synthesis, assembly, dialogue among restricted forms, impact of communication, R10 allows himself, for the first time, to express, share his ideas with his interlocutor (now more like an active spectator than an oligarchic consignor), through the freedom in the use of the means, a series of ideas that had been tormenting him and, at the same time, stimulating him for a while. He creates free-style compositions to express those ideas that had been pounding in his head; he forgets about all claims or economic debts, and prints those compositions into the most competent canvas the Americas has ever seen, and sets to go around the world with his ideas that are somewhere in-between painting, graphics, design. That’s not what really matters.  The inter-generic quality is given for granted.

The inter-generic paradox doesn’t stop to be revealing: Isn’t it that printing tends to favor more than one copy? Does something that would naturally tend to reproduction, becomes a unique work (as opposite to what history says) reach an aura? More legitimization? Is it culturally deified? Is it lifted up, when properly printed, in unique copies? Did R10’s ideas remain “underneath”? That’s the tricky point, the secondary; where we could lose our way. Of course there are paradoxes, tensions, productive contradictions. That’s not the heart of the matter.

The heart of the matter lies in the sense. And even though, it is not quite clear, not at all; the sense could be clearly grasped. Quite clearly grasped.

4

The printed, “pictographic” series by Jorge, Rorschach, holds that title for a reason. Rorschach is a test in which the character basically recognizes and grants possible meanings to some spots. In this psychological principle (it’s not only about what you see, or is it?) lies the premise of the dialogue between the art and the world. Jorge, graphically, establishes guidelines, retraces a possible ground, and the rest is done by the spectator: the spectator creates a world based on suggestions, “signs established” by the artist. Very well-established signs; I would even say induced signs.  

The piece that probably expresses best this concept is La buena sombra. It’s good to have friends in high places [Those who come up to R10 find a good friend in him]. A sheep, symbol of ingenuousness, could get closer to spots that are countries: China, Russia, Venezuela, United States. What would the sheep rather do? Or would it be a black, silly, stubborn, distant sheep? Would it chose the most fruitful and useful dialogue? What would be the price of the other dialogue?

By this, I mean, now, without hateful reserves, that R10’s “artistic” work (was his previous work a sports one? has clear political, ethical connotations. Jorge does not play fast and loose. His ideas are part of the group of uncertainties that make up the life and the mind in this minute. They are protected by the irony and subtlety in the expression, there where the pamphlet would have preferred a denotation rather than a connotation. R10 operates with a wide range of possibilities, usually concealed by the double meaning and double codes implied in popular jokes, sayings, aphorisms, slogans, when they ironically reverse the rhetoric of dated and worn-out maxims.

(…) From the stylistic point of view, the unprejudiced repertoire of different resources that grabs any visual resources that wisely favors the idea. Loads of metaphors and metonymies. The frog that would swallow all the flies of the world. The beetle alighted on La cosa está clarísima, in an illusionist mood, like that resource of publicity according to which an insect or a bird shows the presence of glass or a mirror, and then they, ironically, underpin the nature of the general idea. Appealing either to the engraving tradition of the 19th century or to the medieval line related to the atavism and the cavemen approach. Playing with the possibility of a paranoid Dalilian image by overlapping codes and school-based options. In short, an intelligent and witty cannibalism that is promiscuous regarding everything that can contribute to expressing the idea.

When the feast of allusions and codes, and invitations and get-togethers, there is still a question wandering in the spectator’s mind, pounding in their heads: Are we the ones who are paranoid, the ones who always see something behind everything? Recognizing it, speculating about it, does it entail paranoia? Didn’t it use to be called semiotics? (…)

The topic of graphics in blood is corroborated in the fact that Rodriguez Diez sings either posters or books, which are now “art,” as R 10. That’s it. It doesn’t matter if it looks like an automat, a disinfectant brand, a military squad or the seal of a new weapon (a new grenade!). Not at all. It’s elegant and sufficient.