Lisbon - Oropeza

The figuration is schematic and synthetic and makes use of topographic outlines, strictly adhering to the two-dimensional – elements already familiar from the artist's earlier work. Narrative is also present and infers an articulation of the visual signs arranged in isolation on the plane. The affinities with cartography are clear and constitute our understanding of Joaquim Rodrigo's painting from this phase, which reveals an arrangement of small perceptions coupled to a movement, a journey, or more generally a part of a journey. The landscape, which inevitably refers to a whole, disappears within a field of multiple forces that constitute the perceptions that the painter cartographs as incidents, isolated in their singularity, but seemingly carried along by the constantly inferred movement. The signs suggest different colours, organised in strict connection with their distribution within the perpendicular layout, that define an absolute here and and now from which the dimensions of space and time created by the painting unfold.