Crawling Through Glass

Work by Armando Román

On View March 4th - 26th, 2023

Opening Reception: POSTPONED
Saturday, March 4th, 4 - 7 PM

I am an artist who makes work on paper. The paper varies: colored construction paper, rice paper, canvas. My work combines digital brushstrokes with physical marks made often with crayon, colored pencils, and washable marker. There is no cultural specificity in my palette, or the patterns I employ to remove white space from my compositions. The colors are ambiguously placed, referencing what could be a specific identity-based aesthetic. I think about my compositions in terms of border and center. The center, typically drawn digitally, often does not interact with the border. There is a clear distinction between the two. The surrounding borders are drawn by hand, using a similar palate than its digital counterpart in the center. The relationship between border and center, and its eventual collapse in the work, reflects the competing narrative that exists within my own relationship to Mexican culture.

Color, pattern, and abstraction ; I consider these to be weapons in the aim to disrupt the systems of order I was raised to believe were right. Color is bodily. It is a deeply sensorial tool that, while able to occupy the mind, is felt most deeply in the bones. Color is what allows me to create the work that I do - it dictates the work. Color is both rational and non-rational. While rationality, itself a subjective Western concept, order is still necessary in understanding how colors relate to one another. Colors are sublime, and the act of coloring is a deeply devotional one. In my compositions, I consider white (space) to be an enemy. I fill my drawings with as much color and patterning as I can. The paper I use, however, works against me. The canvas I work with renders digital ink well, but because of its tooth, small crevices of uncolored white space remain. In a drawing full of color, a visible layer of untouchable white space remains.

Armando Román is an interdisciplinary artist living and working in the Midwest. He received his BFA in Studio Arts from Denison University and his MFA in Visual Arts from The Ohio State University. His drawings traverse themes of religion, homosexuality, community, and the self. The Mexican landscape, both cultural and literal, is of particular interest to him. He creates work to better understand his own relationship with Mexico, which is simultaneously familiar and foreign to him. Familiar, in that countless stories have been retold to him of this place, where his mother and father were born. Foreign, in that he has no permanent relationship with it. Hybridization, juxtaposition, and integration are used in his practice as tools of resistance. Román currently works at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago.