Miguel Ángel Rojas - Latin America New York Wednesday, May 24, 2017 | Phillips

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  • Provenance

    Acquired directly from the artist

  • Catalogue Essay

    Miguel Ángel Rojas is one of the first Colombian artists to deal with class, race and sexual orientation by depicting his own life experiences in his work. Rojas began his career in the 1970s, creating strikingly homoerotic, large-scale drawings of body parts rendered in a hyperrealistic manner. At that time, Colombian society was still quite conservative and intolerant, and thus Rojas’ early works are at once a document, a declaration of personal principles and his way of taking a stand against the status quo. These works were made at a time when photorealism was particularly relevant in Colombia, but Rojas spurned objectivity, instead employing his own interests and worldview as a means of expression. Although his drawings and prints refer to action films and Westerns–indeed, cinema was a major influence in Rojas’ formative years–his subject matter is the male body as an object of desire. Photographs taken at the Faenza Theater launched a series that Rojas continuously references in the rest of his work; indeed, they constitute a source of imagery he has addressed and reworked time and time again. The Faenza, Mogador and Imperio were movie theaters built in the early twentieth century that gradually fell into decay as their surrounding neighborhoods became dilapidated and other parts of the city became more affluent. Many of these theaters, which played continuous runs of action films, were also gay cruising spots. In keeping with his subject’s covert nature, Rojas furtively documented the goings-on in these places, taking photographs with the movie screen as the only source of light. It is significant that the erotic encounters Rojas captured took place against a backdrop of violence: a mingling of sex drive and death drive.

    José Roca, Miguel Ángel Rojas, 2008

Sold to benefit FLORA ars+natura

60

Three Works: Proa en la nave de la ilusión (from the Faenza series)

cibachrome print, in 3 parts
each: 33 1/4 x 48 3/4 in. (84.5 x 123.8 cm)
Executed 1979-2010, this is artist proof 1 of 2 from an edition of 3.

Estimate
$20,000 - 30,000 

Contact Specialist
Kaeli Deane
Head of Sale, Latin American Art
New York
+1 212 940 1352

Latin America

New York Auction 24 May 2017