Artist Carlos Rodriguez have collaborated with ArtPort for his newest limited edition print entitled “Primer Encuentro”. Primer Encuentro (First Encounter) is the painting that opens the artist’s series ‘Costumbres Amorosas de los Animales’ (The Loving Habits of Animals).
The overall motif of it was to explore the similarities between human and animal behaviours when interacting with other living beings. Primer Encuentro is also a sort of fable about love at first sight. The character is naked in a mysterious and exotic jungle with Henry Rousseau’s touch. He embraces a gigantic rhinoceros, in a magical encounter, under an intense orange afternoon sun that permeates everything with a golden hue, to Rodríguez that light cast a touch of eternity and a sort of solemn happiness.
Primer Encuentro comes in an edition of 30 and measures 50 x 70 cm. Technique used is Giclee & Etching on SIHL Smooth Matt Cotton Paper 320 gr.
The print will be available on October 21, 2021, Thursday
7PM HK Time (7AM NYC, 4AM LA, 9PM Melbourne, 12PM UK, 8PM Tokyo) at ArtPort website.
The paintings in the series all have a short text written on the back of the canvas. Rodríguez imagined the moment when two people meet for the first time as two inevitable forces colliding. The animals he related to the most were rhinoceroses with their brute and intense force, mainly because they are solitary, very territorial and practically blind creatures. They were portraited in early medieval drawings wearing strange armours.
The back of Primer Encuentro (First Encounter) reads:
We, two irresistible forces that have met,
lonesome and armoured, a little clumsy and blind,
surrendering ourselves to a greater love.
Rodríguez is known for his drawings, paintings, and ceramics that explore the male body, sexual desire as a creative impulse, and issues of gender and identity. Inspired by classical paintings, naïve art and porn, his playful work reveals scenes of men naturally engaged in their games and fantasies.
ArtPort is a publishing house established in 2020. ArtPort supplies limited high-quality editions and prints by artists from the new contemporary art wave. Created around the theme of travelling, ArtPort aims to have people on board, offering them a journey through the art world and an easy way to bring it to their homes. Each edition is a unique and exclusive collaboration between ArtPort and leading contemporary artists.
Source: StreetArt - streetartnews.net
