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Roberto Obregón
Venezuelan / Colombian • 1946-2003
Biography
Venezuelan artist Roberto Obregón studied at the Escuela de Artes Plásticas Julio Árraga in Maracaibo and was influenced by Eadweard Muybridge and Marcel Duchamp. The primary leitmotif in his body of work is the concept of cyclical time and roses. Obregón's works document his physical, bodily decay over time through the physical dissection of roses: He created installations of large rose petals made from cut rubber, which symbolized the dissection.
These petal dissections can also be read as an accumulation of everything a rose could signify for humanity. Further, they denote the bond between the body and nature, as cycles of time and decay affect the body and the rose equally — a concept reminiscent of Félix González-Torres's work.
Insights
From childhood, Obregón was an obsessive collector of objects, including images of flowers he found in magazines and postcards.
Obregón worked for many years as a botanical illustrator, realizing several series of scientific drawings, leaf designs and rose petals that would become part of the leitmotif within his work.