LOVE IS NOT ENOUGH

A SOLO EXHIBITION BY

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RODOLFO DE FLORENCIA

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Building Bridges Art Exchange (BBAX) presents Love Is Not Enough, a solo exhibition featuring the work of Rodolfo de Florencia. 

In our culture, many of us idealize love. We see it as some crazy cure for all of life's problems. Our movies and our stories and our history all celebrate it as life's ultimate goal, the final solution for all of our pain and struggle. And because we idealize love, we overestimate it. As a result, our relationships pay a price.

Always being a spectacle seems to be the motto of life today. The best way to have desired "success" in life is to eat, travel, have sex; live life as though you were on display.

And art is no exception. Museums, galleries, and, above all, art fairs have become an entertainment space, where more than provoking or promoting a culture of reflection and criticism, they promote consumerism, exposure, and of course, spectacle. The more surprising a work, the better. Florencia recalls reading a text by G. Didi-Huberman, entitled "The Phantom Gesture", where he speaks about the importance of the expressiveness of hands, even more than faces, to show the emotions that they are expressing.

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That idea hung around in Florencia's head for some time and, in conjunction with his work for the exhibition "Love Is Not Enough", gained emotion and presence. In this series of small format paintings, he turns to the intimacy of gesture and detail. They are works that refer to nostalgia, to some emotional place that is cemented in memory, or perhaps in the realm of the unconscious. The colors are somewhat opaque, an approach that recalls routine moments in the eye and mind of the viewer, which lack the brilliance with which the mass media bombard us in high definition. His paintings are without pretension; they aim to call attention to the details that we don't usually feel close to, but fall in love with. Details such as a bare back, hairstyle, the position of a hand or leg. These are works that do not aim to be a spectacle. They express a confidence to reconnect with our humanity and share it in a sensitive way, while knowing that love is not enough.