"Science and art become tools with which the visitor becomes involved, emphasizing the sense of urgency that must be the norm to revert the course while we still can."  – Rolando Peña

Virtual Pyramid

Science is knowledge. Technology is the practical application of this knowledge.
Both disciplines have had a powerful influence in the art of Rolando Peña, a conceptual pioneer in integrating technology into his artistic proposals.

In Peña's narrative, time, energy, and space become our most important collective assets, our black gold.

Sacred Fire

Peña's Sacred Fire images release an energy force. It is as if primal events that turned energy into flames transforming our planet are occurring all over again, and the ritual liberates potent, transformative powers present at the very beginning of the world. Peña's sacred rites can re-create the world, cherish time and reset it anew, so that each ritual infuses vigor and strength into a decaying world.

Broken Symmetry

In this space-installation the artist builds an immersive site, a visual analogy of the fusion of barrel, time, space, and light. It is constructed as an anguished cry and hopeful message, telling us to heed the universe and nature at a time in which we depend more than ever on oil revenues, at a time in which crude oil exploitation generates more greenhouse gasses than any other process on the planet.

Black Gold

Science is knowledge. Technology is the practical application of this knowledge.
Both disciplines have had a powerful influence in the art of Rolando Peña, a conceptual pioneer in integrating technology into his artistic proposals.

In Peña's narrative, time, energy, and space become our most important collective assets, our black gold.

Resonance within Art Practice

The work of Peña is essential to the understanding of the transition from late Modernism to Contemporaneity in the Americas, as a result of his profound research and relevant process, and given Peña's art radical pluralism.
Resonance within Art Practice is a vision of Peña's artistic approaches, as a part of the research and curatorial challenges facing the study of conceptual practices, and as a compelling inquiry of conceptual art practices in Latin America.

The 7 Elements of Reflection

Peña presents seven gold barrels to reflect the seen elements or compounds that constitute crude oil (carbon, hydrogen, sulfur nitrogen, oxygen, metals, and slats) and the seven elements of art (line, shape, form, texture, value, color, and space) under one icon, as a space of reflection where art and science as parts of the contemporaneity of difference, count differently, att different times, in different places.

The narrative of the artistic work of Rolando Peña, always aims to include social, cultural and historical collective references of unmapped trajectories of the contexts that surrounds him, related, as connected experiences with other parts of the world. A visual and performative metaphor on selected contemporary issues, where he has made no concessions in more than half a century of artistic work, exhibitions and projects. His acute, refined and cultivated oeuvre body of work is organized in particular stages always combining different media as a multimedia artist involved in theatre, dance, and computer technology.

…

• More than 20,000 visitors from United States, Latin America and Europe
• More than 15 guided tours to schools, art students, VIP visitors, scholars, critics and special audiences
• Five workshops, two lectures-dialogues and one performance
• Special activities for; underserved communities
• Artist and curator dialogues with special focus groups on conceptual art, art & science and performance.

Interested in the Black Gold Exhibition Project? 
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