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ORO, by Pedro Ruiz at the Santo Domingo Cultural Center in Oaxaca

ORO, the miniature painting exhibition that is part of the Desplazamientos series by Pedro Ruiz is being exhibited in the Dómina wing at the Santo Domingo cultural center in Oaxaca, Mexico. The artist was sent a special invitation to represent Colombia by the Cultural Secretary of the state of Oaxaca; the entity that is organizing the cultural event The May festivities in Oaxaca “Humanitas 2010”.

Pedro Ruiz, Tigre mariposa, 2009, acrilico y resina sobre madera, 20 x 30 cm.

This moving series was born from the Desplazamientos project that began in 2004 as a “visual testimony of the forced exile that results from the violence that millions of Colombians suffer from”. The first exhibition includes 25 big pieces with variations of the one theme of a single character that rowed on his canoe with the lost landscape behind him. ORO includes 34 miniature paintings that have to be observed on reading tables with a magnifying glass to discover the geste of a man that sails with all that Colombians- who are used to an image where violence dominates the overwhelming beauty of the land- wish to share: “the different values that have shaped our nation throughout centuries”, says the artist. “The sailors carry their landscape, but also their town, their houses, their music, their poetry, their dances, their images and their monuments.” “El Dorado, as a representation of our most distant memory, is the framework in which the piece develops”, he explains. “The stories of war- says Ruiz- have their given space, the media covets them, and they’re a requirement of the contemporary cultural practices. Meanwhile, the memory of our true identity, of our interior landscape is lost every time it crosses out borders”. ORO tackles violence in a different way. As a space it accentuates the relation with the astounding beauty of the natural landscape that, for Reyes, is part of “our most inner nature”. Every painting is accompanied by portraits, verses or songs and objects like jewelry by Adriana Henao, the literary texts of William Ospina, works by the anthropologist Fabricio Cabrera and the vision of the Tropenbos foundation, which works for the preservation of forests and culture. The infrastructure of the installation, the lighting, sound and supports of the exhibition were designed and made by Peña Cuellar Architects, who succeeded in creating an auspicious assembly for contemplation. The Art Consultants gallery organized a production of ORO, an exhibition conceived within the framework of the Colombian identity, with which Pedro Rey seeks to create “a new look into our national reality”.