José Rodeiro

Bio:

(b. February, 1955 in Ybor City, Tampa, Florida)—Rodeiro is a Professor of Art and Art History, NJCU; a Visual Artist's Fellow of the National Endowment for the Arts (1986 - 1987); a Fulbright Fellow (1995), and a Cintas Fellow (1982). He is Coordinator of Art History, NJCU. He received M.F.A from Pratt Institute, NY and his Ph.D. from Ohio University’s College of Fine Arts. Rodeiro’s maternal ancestry is Cuban-American. He has lived and worked in Spain and Central America. Rodeiro has received major public art (mural) commissions from Tampa Arts Councils, Tampa, FL, and Maryland State Arts Council, Baltimore, MD. His exhibitions include the Washington County Museum of Fine Arts, Hagerstown, Maryland; Mason Gross Gallery, Rutgers University, NJ; Kenkelaba Gallery (New York State Arts Council) NYC, NY; Florida International Museum, Miami, FL., Newark Museum, NJPAC, UMDNJ’s Robert Wood Johnson Gallery, Perth Amboy Gallery (Center for the Arts), and other venues.

Statement:

Active both as an artist and art historian, Rodeiro is keenly aware of stylistic transitions within his art. While an undergraduate at the University of Tampa, he met Bolivian poet Nicomedes Suárez-Araúz, whose aesthetic theory of Amnesis had a profound impact on Rodeiro’s aesthetic development. Amnesis is an artistic exploration of amnesia (the “forgotten” or “lost objects” in our memory). Rodeiro utilizes an Amnesis approach to painting, by carefully weaving his style into spectacular images that convey complex visual iconography.

Since the 1980s, Rodeiro often educes images from two sources: his effulgent imagination and from art history. For example, Rodeiro conceived a large painting dedicated to the victims of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack. In Rodeiro’s 9/11, there are allusions to images found in Picasso’s Guernica (1937), as well as Tarot card symbols, and references to ancient Cretan labyrinthic mythology. As in Guernica, noticeable motifs of death, tragedy, and conflict prevail; these virulent elements are appropriated as symbols of a contemporary massacre. By clearly referencing Picasso’s modern masterpiece, (which protested an unjust Fascist air-bombardment of innocent civilians, during the Spanish Civil War), Rodeiro directly examines a day of deadly horror and loss of life that has cast a malignant specter on current world events. (Midori Yoshimoto)