ROGELIO BÁEZ VEGA:
Tropical Decay

Rogelio Báez Vega

ID. La Concha Hotel, 1958, Archs. Toro and Ferrer, San Juan, Puerto Rico, 2022-2023

oil, beeswax, and powdered metallic pigment on canvas

96” x 118”

Private collection

‍

‍

ROGELIO BÁEZ VEGA: Tropical Decay

FEB 10, 2024 - AUG 2024

‍

In the twenty-two paintings presented in TROPICAL DECAY, Báez explores the decline of the modernization project of our island by portraying dystopian landscapes devoid of any human presence. In these landscapes, lush tropical flora devour the architecture that was designed to symbolize our progress, improve our quality of life. With a steel focus and superlative technical mastery, Báez and his current paintings address the modern development of Puerto Rico from the critical distance lent to a contemporary artist.

‍

One might ask why organize an exhibition of paintings of tropical Midcentury Modern buildings and their physical decline, and the answer is quite simple: These paintings express the inevitable decay of a project conceived and implemented by a colonial government that aimed to redefine Puerto Rico with its own myth of progress and abundance, and that laid the foundation for a debt-burdened economy that would crumble in the twenty-first century, leaving the island in financial ruin.

‍

These are not easy situations, and yet these remarkably executed paintings by Rogelio Báez employ their idiosyncratic beauty to communicate the complexity of those situations to the viewer. They allow us to begin constructive dialogues over the tragedy of what happens when your country has been in an economic depression for seventeen years, where mass emigration, bankrupt government administrations, an overtaxed colonial model, and severe fiscal policies have led to a present in which the government’s infrastructure is in ruins and citizens are frustrated and looking for answers.

‍

Rogelio Báez Vega is an extraordinary talent and a masterly painter, but above all he is a gifted visual storyteller who can bring exuberant beauty and order to chaos.  Báez’ works offer a critical view of Puerto Rico’s current reality, and the contradictory feelings of pride and disillusionment that we feel toward that time in our history when as a society we were led to believe that we could and should aspire for more.

‍