frieze

Tau Lewis, Curtis Santiago and Daniel Rios Rodriguez Cooper Cole, Toronto, Canada

September 2017

[…] Meanwhile, in Cooper Cole’s downstairs space, Daniel Rios Rodriguez’s solo exhibition similarly employs a rough-edged aesthetic to thematize issues of identities that refuse to be limited by the synthetic boundaries of nation-states. For example, the upright snake in the colourful, impatiently hewn Nerodiasuggests a do-it-yourself caduceus or rod of Asclepius (alluding to, respectively, commerce and healing) while its name references a water snake common to Rodriguez’s home state of Texas yet found throughout North America. The Nerodia is a curious figure for resistant, mobile identity: widespread, tough, adaptable, but dully coloured and non-venomous. Nonetheless, without capturing much attention, it has infiltrated a huge geographical range, which it seems destined to occupy for centuries to come. […]—Charles Reeve

Contemporary Art Review Los Angeles (Carla)

Milano Chow, Ann Greene Kelly and Daniel Rios Rodriguez at Michael Benevento

2 August 2017

[…] Daniel Rios Rodriguez’s work is our introduction—small-scale, semi-vernacular assemblages that call to mind the mythic and often obscure imagery of folktales or religious visionaries. A sort of visual equivalent to the oral tradition, Rodriguez’s Bright Dark (2017) in particular resembles a florid retelling of an airplane crash. Egretta’s (2017) patterned perspective drives our view toward a pearl-like object at its center—explicit meaning taking a back seat to pure reverence. […]—Aaron Horst

The Irish Times

Review: New talent at the Kerlin

1 August 2017

[…] Rios Rodriguez’s work has the richly impasto feel of Paul Mosse’s paintings, coupled with a bit of Braque collage, although his tactile pieces (oh, how you want to touch them) are more figurative. Look closely to discover there’s much more than paint going on. Shy Violets (2017), is a delicious little oval of thick oil paint, with nails, rope and glass all in the mix. It’s a pleasure to make out the delicate little flower heads, struggling for being among all that material detritus. […]

Artforum

Critic’s Pick: Milano Chow, Ann Greene Kelly, Daniel Rios Rodriguez MICHAEL BENEVENTO

July 2017

In another room, Daniel Rios Rodriguez’s painted sculptures flirt between two- and three-dimensionality. His bright and joyous wall hangings, made with wood, rope, and nails, are at once abstract altarpieces and dartboards with curves and angles gone haywire. Despite this trio’s disparate techniques and separate presentations, there is a quiet and intriguing overlap between each artist’s perception of the world.

The New York Times

Art and Museums in NYC This Week

11 May 2017

DANIEL RIOS RODRIGUEZ: ‘CONTROLLED BURN’ at Nicelle Beauchene Gallery (closes on May 21). This San Antonio-based artist’s toothsome little panel paintings are like present-day icons devoted to nature and abstraction that also take tips from the early modernists who merged them. Rotating among plant forms, glimpses of outer space and schematic self-portraits, they are indebted to Marsden Hartley’s robust brushwork and rich palette, Forrest Bess’s visionary quirkiness and Arthur Dove’s collage-assemblages. Built as much as painted, they are supplemented with marbles; dried weeds; ribbon; small stones; and scraps of wood, shingle and jewelry — all of which enhance the votive quality. There’s also rope, sometimes burned and sometimes used for framing, echoing Picasso’s famous 1912 “Still Life With Chair Caning.” Occasionally the edges break out in jagged zigzags. In the radiant “Jumbo,” they might be sunbeams, or signs of the discovery of the Higgs boson.—Roberta Smith

Mousse

Theory of the Minor

February–March 2017

[…] Unlike the major, which ratifies, reaffirms, and relies upon specific, already thoroughly codified linear, if dialectical, art historical traditions (for instance Wade Guyton is the quintessential major painter, and it is perhaps no mere coincidence that his latest body of work was actually the news), the minor creates or unearths new or unexpected, if tangential, trajectories. To this end, examples of contemporary minor painting range in age and geography from the Canadian, London-based Allison Katz, to the Belgian éminence grise Walter Swennen, to the Texan Daniel Rios Rodriguez, whose practices variously engage and depend upon minor practitioners from Francis Picabia to René Daniëls to Forrest Bess (all of whom have recently been subject to revivals—meaning we could very well be in the age of the minor). Abandoning a linear approach toward the horizon of painting, they could be said to move along it in lateral shifts and jumps, while developing radically idiosyncratic pictorial methods and idioms. […] —Chris Sharp

Art in America

Daniel Rios Rodriguez

Daniel Rios Rodriguez’s quirky, unassuming paintings don’t fall into any easily recognizable niche or category, as was seen in the up-and-coming San Antonio artist’s first solo show at Western Exhibitions. With their homemade and found wood frames, their collaged elements (shells, river rocks, feathers), and their deliberately unrefined paint-handling, these works have a rustic, do-it-yourself feel. […]—Kyle MacMillan

Visual Art Source

Daniel Rios Rodriguez

February 2016

Daniel Rios Rodriguez is known for his modestly-sized paintings and drawings featuring bold line work and collaged material. The Yale alum’s aesthetic is Modernist-meets-Outsider, with knowing, painterly conventions commingled with rather straightforward imagery and narratives direct from his everyday life. Rodriguez’s prior works are populated with images of symbolic skulls and literal paintbrushes. For the current show the natural landscape surrounding the artist’s home in San Antonio, Texas provides his subject matter. […]—Robin Dluzen