The cultural facility Factoria Habana -O’Reilly St. # 308, between Havana and Aguiar-is inserted within the activities of the 12th Biennial of Havana with a comprehensive project of excellence by presenting a group of solo exhibitions of top level artists; including Rocío García with project The Mission, which opening is scheduled for Saturday May 23 at 8 pm.

With the participation of Rocío García, among other personalities of the national plastic arts, it is guaranteed the presence of a solid work in its realization, well-made, attractive, because the artist is known for being generous in creating a climate of tension, generating expectation in the audience who surely will tour the canvases discovering the concretion of a serial story in individual paintings, which tell a concatenated sequence of events, -as main support, in which the paintings act as if were frames of a film. The dramatic action, unique coloring, the atmosphere of black cinema and the unique characters roam her pieces, highlighting our senses through provocation.

Her aesthetics bets on thriller, as a genre in cinematography, to intermarry her poetics, wisely resolved by the realization of a serial sequence in each pictorial exponent, conceived from the good painting, reinforced by the visual, concrete and precise realization of the idea she wants to develop. She contrasts planes of color with the intention of achieving a suggestive atmosphere in message transmission, backed by dramatic action, the unique coloring and atmosphere of black cinema, in which the characters wander, highlighting our senses through provocation.

In her works the characters exalt our senses from an express challenge, tinged by sense of humor and suggestive symbolic elements: the presence of bars, the atmosphere of suspense and timelessness of black American cinema present in each series, in which something disturbing emerges from the eyes of the characters, rubbing bodies, and the positions taken by beings in which a marked eroticism is seen.

Her artistic discourse explores the psychological issues of human beings from a Freudian approach when considering sexuality as an essential part of the human condition and root of human conflict. Her aesthetics is closely related to the theme of power with eroticism, -which she considers as one of the greatest powers in the world, if used to manipulate individuals- given the ability to influence certain sociological, policies , religious attitudes…, assumed by the individual in the historical process. She estimates that through eroticism you can handle many situations, undertaken from the power a secretary has up to the one of a head of state.

Consequently, Rocio questions the concept of power emanated from the erotic, expressed from a narrative imagery of visual, sequential, colorful force, and solved by provocative characters, whose dramatic and psychological attitude help to recreate universal human issues.

Her career is firmly settled down when in 1977 she obtained a scholarship for graduate studies in the specialty of painting at the Repin Academy of Art in the then Soviet Union, which were very satisfactory for her growth as an artist. The Academy was very classical and taught her painting and drawing almost like in the Renaissance and, from the point of view of technique and drawing, also provided her a very solid training, which by far complemented what she had previously learned in San Alejandro. In the USSR she had the opportunity to have real good teachers, very talented, that provided a significant wealth of her performance from a formal point of view as the theoretical and practical basis she received was extremely important, considering, above all, that her intention has always been working the human figure.

After returning to Havana in 1994, she works as a professor of painting and drawing at San Alejandro Academy , an institution with which she has maintained a close relationship, as she enjoys and takes advantage from the exchange with young people, which revitalizes her and also uses as feedback.

With the series Hombres, Machos, Marineros (1998) she began to raise awareness in using the sequential image, linking the affinity of her art with cinema through a painting that subverts various canons regarding sexuality. In her work she externalizes her penchant for cinema, focusing on one of the elements that attract her the most: the visual strength and narrative intent, conceived from an imaginary story, which offers certain freedoms to viewers for them to “arm” their own. The author offers signals and details, such as in a tale of suspense, so that the viewer to consume fiction at will and take it from her perspective. She plays with these possibilities, to activate the potentialities of the receptor by using humor as a dramatic and psychological tool.

Another important element in her work is that timelessness in her artistic production; she is not interested in making a localist painting, her series show universal human issues.

She finds fascinating the persistence of the underworld of bars and uses this suggestive item to enable the reference to black American cinema of films made in the 40s and 50s of last century.

Finally, she assumes that love is the perfect murderer, because it will always “kill” you (in the best sense of the word, of course). You can escape from anything but love, no one escapes from love. From this idea she created a series that formally quotes from Titian to Tarantino, manipulating, in turn, the legend of the famous murderer of women, Jack the Ripper, to, from a metaphorical game, deal with the concept and the consequences of that feeling.

In short, these are some of the keys that define the work of Rocío García. I invite you to visit this great and innovative exhibition.