Rogelio Báez Vega

 

Using fiction as a point of departure, Baez-Vega builds imaginaries in which nature is used as a stereotype of the wild, precarious and over-exoticized, but also as a symbol of re-colonization or decolonization. Through this intention of exaggerating environments of tropical fiction, he, however, amazes himself with the uncanny, thin threshold that separates his world from reality. Báez-Vega’s critical and disillusioned view around this false image of progress promoted by the colonial project serves him as his main source of inspiration, motivating him to generating new narratives that converge with aspirations of building a country with high integrity.

 

Báez-Vega builds his paintings as a worker builds a structure. He avoids using brushes, refrains from copying reality, and categorically rejects almost everything he learnt in his academic training. Instead, he fabricates his oil paints mixing them with wax and resin, in order to create a mortar similar to the concrete and plaster with which walls are built. He connects with the methods of creating of the artisan, utilising knowledge he acquired through different jobs he carried for his survival: woodwork, brickwork, and build work, –helping him reinvent the way he applies paint onto the canvas. Rogelio also employs printing techniques characteristic of traditional screen printing, such as stencilling, which involve complex preparatory processes carried out before painting begins. His way of building paintings is more reminiscent of the way models are built in architectural studios than the traditional methods of painting. Through all of these processes, Rogelio Baez-Vega creates a diverse imagery which make his work unique and unusual.

 

Baez-Vega’s work combines a critique of colonialism with hopes for a more elevated humanism. Disillusion and failure intertwine with pride and aspirations. In his paintings, these contradictions coexist with beauty, humour and a sense of an uncertain future.

 

Rogelio Báez Vega is a multidisciplinary artist who studied visual arts at the Escuela de Artes Plásticas and the Universidad del Sagrado Corazón in San Juan, Puerto Rico. His work critically engages with Puerto Rico’s colonial history, constructed landscapes, and vernacular architecture, weaving in references to Caribbean speculative fiction and contemporary island political culture.

 

He is the co-founder of Estudio de Grabado Experimental (EGE), a community printmaking workshop dedicated to the creation, experimentation, and study of Puerto Rican printmaking. EGE serves as a space for learning and artistic exchange within the local community of Villa Palmeras, where his studio is currently based.

Báez Vega actively exhibits his work at institutions both locally and internationally and has participated in several artist residencies across the United States.

 

In 2024, he held his first museum exhibition at the Museo de Arte y Diseño de Miramar (MADMi); completed a summer residency at the prestigious Joan Mitchell Center in New Orleans; and in November, presented a solo exhibition at a gallery in London.

 

His work forms part of the permanent collections of the Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico, the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Puerto Rico, the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Norval Foundation Homestead in South Africa, among others. He has also been awarded grants from the Pollock-Krasner, Joan Mitchell, and Gottlieb Foundations, Trellis Art Found Stepping Stone, among others.