Eduardo Roca

Diagonal IV

2023

Eduardo Roca was born October 8, 1973 in Almería. He studied at the University of Fine Arts in Granada and lives and works in Vienna since 2009. Since the beginning of his career, Roca has moved with a high level of technical skill, a feel for light and color in the – at first glance – classic genres of landscape, still life and portrait, with landscapes representing the majority of his oeuvre. One quickly realizes that the technical skills of the artist are a motor for constant further development: Roca perfects the selection of the cut-out, selection and reduction of the color palette, light as a design factor and always gets involved in the immediate experience of urban situations. Roca questions the genre landscape as such by choosing subjects and charging them artistically, which at first glance have nothing to do with a landscape, such as factory premises or construction sites. A high point of this development and, at the same time, the turning point to the imaginary landscapes are variations that he paints from a motif and combines into an overall work, like the “Variaciones” in this exhibition. 25 views of an inconspicuous – real – house result in an impressive ensemble and show in a concentrated form the possibilities of expression and artistic enhancement that a motif that at first glance can experience banal. This has nothing to do with a landscape in the conventional sense. This multiplication can no longer be increased and Roca, in all its radicalism, starts to design and thus reduce its landscapes as a whole. The result is usually vast, deserted landscapes with a mystical light, the attempt to locate them in a forced manner must fail. Since the landscapes are constructed, nothing about them is accidental: there are no people. They are only remembered by buildings, but much more by their remains, which create a morbid feeling and force the viewer into the role of a late survivor. The emptiness is deceiving, however, because it is the viewer who is supposed to enliven and experience the scenes, and the works are clearly called upon to do so. Roca uses the almost god-like freedom to create landscapes for mostly unusual breadth and depth. Deep horizons increase the effect, as does an often glistening light that reveals the origin of the artist. The stage is created, he leaves the conquest to others.