Edward Del Rosario

Edward Del Rosario
"Bread and Circus" in the Nancy Margolis Gallery.
This was his first solo exhibitions in which he is showing eleven oil paintings.
His painting are very clean and meticulous most of them in a solid color background. The figures in the paintings are very small and curious looking, they seem to be doing a variety of things with each other or just by themselves. The process of these figures start as pencil drawings and then are later transferred to his canvas. These 3-dimensional figures sit, like I said before, in a flat space, they seem to be actors on a stage for the world to look, even tho some do seem to be hiding, or are turned. There is no single linear perspective, on the other hand there seems to be many. Some of the figures are set most of the time on what seems to be a blank room, but they are sometimes situated in cages or other exteriors but these are never really defined by the painter. The miniature figures are very interesting to look at, let's just say they carry a character of their own. Some of them are in formal suits and fancy dresses, but some other are like in this painting to the left, naked and turned away, though not all nudes in this painting are this shy, some of them are frontal with tattooed bodies. Some figures are dressed in costumes, from animals to native costumes form other countries, some of them have no heads! They have trees or animal heads growing from their bodies.
Del Rosario paints a multitude of people interacting with one another, most of these paintings are very puzzling and strange. You see the figures chasing one another, thought most of them, to me, seem very staged and frozen in time. On the other hand, these may also seem timeless, some of the characters may reveal a sense of real humanity, and the way people may act, perhaps how people view others, a caged lonely girl and a man opening her secured space may be a metaphor to other ideas.
I really the way the paintings were spaced out from each other. Some were like triptychs right next to each other, but they did not steal the spot light. Most of these paintings were of medium size and the 2 or 3 large ones had a wall to themselves. The lighting really helped bring out the colors in them, all very vivid colors against the solid background and the white wall; it was really a nice experience.