Swampspace Gallery
presents
presents
ADOLFO RENE SANCHEZ
(1957-1990)
an incomplete archive
In Loving Memory of My Dear Brother Who Died of Aids Twenty Years Ago.
Opens May 8th 6-12pm
NYC circa 1984
Before computers, man-made killer viruses and all the "progress" that has transpired, there were happy days when the biggest worry two young Cuban brothers from Miami had was how to pay the $350. rent on a giant four room apartment in the Upper West Side.
Guess what, we paid the rent by selling art. We lived like princes with dirty faces.
Drawing Comes Easy
What is it that drives people to make art?
If it is Beauty, Humor and Social Relevance then they are on the right track to a thorny fulfillment.
Art is the most powerful force on Earth.
Love Made Him Do It
Painting is probably the most challenging of approaches to artistic expression.
There is nothing more intimidating than a blank canvas staring back at you asking to be transformed for some greater good. To tap ones stream of consciousness is to connect with the power and illusion of the spirit world. Adolfo was driven by the passion of an indescribably hungry spirit he possessed. He nourished it like the champion of creativity the that he was.
W.H.O. Knows.
But something (not) funny happened on the way to the forum and all hell broke loose. Where did the Human Immunodeficiency Virus come from? Where did it go? How many more will die from Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome?
The World Health Organization may have some answers but who cares.
Self Portrait 1984
Most people live a long incidental life. They seldom take chances. Few will challenge the ancient rituals of creative experssion. They will not go there for their minds fear the awakening of the self to a state of being. Our minds want to be in charge of our every waking moment so that we focus on the past and the future. But it is the being that most honestly understands and reflects what life is about, it's about the Now.
In other words, Less Thinking More Feeling.
This is what Adolfo was about.
Inscription For A Gravestone
I am not dead, I have only become inhuman:
That is to say,
Undressed myself of laughable prides and infirmities,
But not as a man
Undresses to creep into bed, but like an athlete
Stripping for the race.
The delicate ravel of nerves that made me a measurer
Of certain fictions
Called good and evil; that made me contract with pain
And expand with pleasure;
Fussily adjusted like a little electroscope:
That's gone, it is true;
(I never miss it; if the universe does,
How easily replaced!)
But all the rest is heightened, widened, set free.
I admired the beauty
While I was human, now I am part of the beauty.
I wander in the air,
Being mostly gas and water, and flow in the ocean;
Touch you and Asia
At the same moment; have a hand in the sunrises
And the glow of this grass.
I left the light precipitate of ashes to earth
For a love-token.
Robinson Jeffers
*
I am not dead, I have only become inhuman:
That is to say,
Undressed myself of laughable prides and infirmities,
But not as a man
Undresses to creep into bed, but like an athlete
Stripping for the race.
The delicate ravel of nerves that made me a measurer
Of certain fictions
Called good and evil; that made me contract with pain
And expand with pleasure;
Fussily adjusted like a little electroscope:
That's gone, it is true;
(I never miss it; if the universe does,
How easily replaced!)
But all the rest is heightened, widened, set free.
I admired the beauty
While I was human, now I am part of the beauty.
I wander in the air,
Being mostly gas and water, and flow in the ocean;
Touch you and Asia
At the same moment; have a hand in the sunrises
And the glow of this grass.
I left the light precipitate of ashes to earth
For a love-token.
Robinson Jeffers
*
