Using pencil, acrylic, ink, markers, and watercolor, the works of Mariano E. Rodríguez construct an aesthetic where the human figure becomes a territory of displacement and rupture. The figure appears distorted. This deformation conceals the painter’s brutal expression, which does not reveal itself immediately but remains encrypted among strokes and stains. This symbolic or emotional violence can only be perceived by “anguished eyes,” a metaphor that points to a profound sensitivity—the artist’s—anchored in a rational face. The line does not seek to outline the figure but rather to interrogate it, to deconstruct it, to deny it, and to reconstruct it through visual disobedience.

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As part of the process, the work crosses a contemporary technical threshold: it is digitized with near-surgical precision—not to be lost in the intangibility of pixels, but to preserve—in the age of simulacra—an almost sacred fidelity to the original gesture. The result is printed on 300-gram, acid-free Fuji Crystal Gloss paper, in two carefully chosen formats (21 x 29.7 cm and 14.8 x 21 cm). This medium, combined with museum-grade framing, does not seek to elevate the object to the category of a unique piece, but rather to underscore the tension between the ephemerality of the human stroke and the permanence granted by technology when properly guided. In this intersection between the analog and the digital, the work does not lose its soul: it is displaced, extended, as if each physical copy were a faithful echo of the original impulse.

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The final piece rests on an immaculate surface that, in its purity, grants the artist’s final gesture of mercy toward the viewer. There, on that technical altar that simulates neutrality, an intimate dialogue is established—not with the gaze, but with the observer—an intimate exchange between the creative mind and the created work.