Shape-shifting Landscape

Shape-shifting Landscape explores Gerardo Rosales’s experience as an immigrant in the U.S. Following his home country’s economic and political free fall, Rosales endeavors to stimulate an inquisitiveness and empathy about the dire situation and those affected by making Venezuela’s current state vivid, moving beyond the abstraction it has become in U.S. media outlets. Rosales’s NADA House presentation considers the unique qualities and opportunities offered by the nongallery domestic space and its uniquely diverse audience. Shape-shifting Landscape comprises a composition of two- and three-dimensional Dibond cutouts in concert with traditional paintings on canvas.

Rosales constructs intricate layers of personal symbolism, employing a folk-art language to generate a dynamic visual space that contains and manifests political, social, and environmental realities. The magical and medical promises hidden in the nation’s deep forests—endangered by economic greed and lack of leadership—are visually rendered through his lens as a queer expatriate.