Ruben Moreno's "Socratic Codices" @ Contreras Gallery (November 2011)

View of the Contreras Gallery, now showing Ruben Moreno's "Socratic Codices"

Local artist, Ruben Moreno, has a very ambitious and very impressive show at the Contreras Gallery.  It is highly conceptual in nature, and after spending a fair amount of time lingering over his 21 medium sized paintings, I came to this conclusion: Ruben needs to make a feature length film. He's got an imagination like Steven Spielberg, and he's got a sense of darkness and the macabre like Alfred Hitchcock.
 
Standing in the middle of the gallery, you're surrounded by the work, and even though it's very surreal, dreamlike, and "arty" in some of its imagery (that is, characters hold up objects, making them into symbols...but of what?) , it has a very personal feel.  It's risky making work like this which is so pedantic: at times, it feels a bit like the TV show "Lost"...with so much dream imagery, with cryptic titles, and with a philosophy about seeing the world as composed as a series of sets of four (e.g. "Four Elements", "Four Horsemen", "Four Main Emotions", and so on)  This type of one-size-fits-all philosophy can be a bit much to take (there are "fours" everywhere!), but Ruben's saving grace is that he invests so much of his personal life into the work, that it feels like a confession. He's put so much care in the drawing and execution of the paintings, that you can feel that has a respect for his subject matter, and also for his audience.

"The Four Emotions: Love, Hate, Joy, Sadness": A touch of Stephen King or Alfred Hitchcock?

I should say something about his painting technique: he doesn't use much paint. In fact, many of these pictures rely on the natural color of the wood grain ieft. There's no gesso here: it's all tinted and stained wood (blue and orange tend to be the predominant colors). These paintings are very minimally colored. They're actually more like tinted wooden boxes.

You can feel many of cross-currents and relationships between the various pictures: this is a body of work that gives you big hug: it feels like a big family of images.  But that's its "weakness" too: each work has its strength when in the community of all the other paintings, but is diminished when each is considered alone. The strength of the "Socratic Codices" is in the community of paintings. To see only one of these paintings is to see this work out of context.  Ruben's work has a cumulative effect, and the more you see, the more you understand his epic idea. Which is why I see the next logical place for Ruben to go is Hollywood! With ideas this vast, he should probably make an epic-length film. His images all seem like movie posters anyhow. But back to the exhibit...

Moreno's "Four Stages of Sleep: Beta, Alpha, Delta, Theta": A touch of "Vertigo"?

This show is not merely a body of artwork. Rather, it's an illustrated "codex" (Ruben's term) of symbols, situations, and dream sequences that feel very much at home with artwork  by other surrealists, such as Rene Magritte or Salvidor Dali.  There's a philosophy, and a mystical point of view that underlies all of this work: to decipher the "code", you've just got to study the pictures. But there's mystery to it, because it's not clear to what the connections are all about.

 One of the curiosities of this show (out of many) and the incredibly long titles, which read more like paragraphs quoted from some textbook. For example, one picture shows a young man "removing" a girls heart (Aztec style?), under the Eiffel Tower at night. Paris has vanished (judging from the barren landscape typical of artwork by Dali or DeChirico), and only a few symbols remain (the hawk flying through the back of the picture is a common motif in this work).

Ruben Moreno's "The Mammalian Heart Consists of Four Chambers..."

The title of the work isn't really a title at all, but rather, a paragraph from a textbook. The title of the work shown above is "The Mammalian Heart consists of four chambers: the right and left atriums, the right and left ventricles".  

 In the image below, Moreno offers his vision of the Garden of Eden, in his painting called: "The Four Rivers of the Garden of Eden"

Figures who resemble Samuel Jackson & Lauryn Hill star in Moreno's "Four Rivers of the Garden of Eden"

Moreno's "Four Dimensions of Mindfulness"

My favorite painting in the show is called "Four Dimensions of Mindfulness".  It shows a picture of four nude figures in a forest (or is it two, standing before a mirror?) It's the one painting here that has a sense of deep space; of an environment where the viewer can step into.  I like the sense of alternate reality, or is that a door to another dimension? Plus, Moreno treats us to four unique views of four young beautiful women. What's not to like??

 When you walk into this show, and study some of the imagery, you feel as if you've walked into a maze.  I'm reminded of a classic video game called "Myst": you wake up in a mysterious place, and its up to you to figure out what's going on. Same vibe here; the more you look at it, the more you get drawn in..... Moreno's combined surrealism, with a sense of history (both his own, as well as that of pre-Colombian cultures), along with a penchant for Western Philosophy (that is, Aristotle's categories), and an obvious love of "Heavy Metal" styled illustration.  He obviously spent a lot of time thinking about this work, and planning the images, before he set down to painting them.  The end result is epic: you feel like you're in the middle of something great. 

Michael Contreras (of the Contreras Gallery) tells me that the 21 paintings on display here are only a beginning, for Ruben plans to make a total of 80 paintings in all! That could take years. And the more of this work we see, the more we'll understand...or will we? Yes, these painting ARE like the TV show LOST!

But I like the way Ruben thinks. He's thinking on an epic scale, and how all of his 80 paintings will form a monumental masterwork, that is at once surreal, dark, sad, fearful, cryptic, sentimental, stylish, honest, arty, and bold.

It's about time we had an artist who thought big! We should celebrate this emerging talent in our midst!