econversations by Ronaldo Ruiz projects images of reality and simulation in an effort to create open dialogue. With paintings, installations, and new media works, the artist probes contemporary issues on nature, the environment and man’s relentless drive for advancement and blinded self-preservation. In today’s technological explosion, who is left unscathed, and who wins in the end?
There is a resonance of textured reds and golds as in Ruiz’ past abstract paintings, with the appearance of a few concentric circles and daubs of raised textures that his artworks are known for, but his Simulation Hypothesis series of paintings are more studied, with smoothed over roughness and subdued fire. In brilliant colors of metallics and intense hues, these portray the attempt at control in the urban setting of grid-like cityscapes as seen from an encompassing bird’s eye perspective, or multi-colored computer motherboards that the artist has been fond of using since the early stages of his career.
With his process and execution suggesting less of the organic and more of the deliberate, the artist replicates an environment thoroughly manipulated by man, with touches of green existing at the peripheries of the canvas much like nature’s instinct to spread anew. These paintings are juxtaposed with performance images and plants, providing a counterbalance in a quest to seek balance and harmony in symbiotic existence.
On the other hand, Ruiz’ Invaders series are smaller scale paintings that explore isolation and detachment, the self-centeredness of contemporary lifestyle. Sharp, angular shapes float on mutely textured grounds of white, like puzzle pieces picked out from urban plans, echoing the slope of angled roofs and the jaggedness of haphazardly portioned space.
Ronaldo Ruiz also exhibits several multi-media and interactive installations to interact with the gallery space and provide a different dimension to his works.
Hanging speakers serve the atypical purpose of being planters as they crawl with vegetation. Circuit bending components are attached to this installation, with an invitation to the audience to interact with and manipulate the artwork. The viewer participates in the installation piece, making it an experiential and performative work of art that brings time and space into the fore.
Ruiz sets up a rubber latex baby floating in a water tank with live fish and plants sharing oxygen with it, the inanimate intervening the habitat of the living. Crawling babies swarm under a TV monitor that projects local programs and provides electricity-powered light and heat as surrogate incubator. The babies seem to converse among themselves amidst greenery, cds and computer chips embedded on sand, attempting communication despite the mind-numbing barrage of media cast onto them.
Perhaps inspired by pioneer installation artist Allan Kaprow, Ruiz employs found objects to immerse the viewer into a multi-dimensional sensory experience, rather than the usual isolating “look, don’t touch” feel of art, implying the dissolution of the line between art and life. Kaprow himself noted that “if we bypass ‘art’ and take nature itself as a model or point of departure, we may be able to devise a different kind of art… out of the sensory stuff of ordinary life”.
Essentially, econversations introduces technology, nature and creative expression combined in artworks, with the observer considered as a multi-dimensional entity as well; he walks into the exhibition with his own identity, expectations, opinions and social habits. Art is presented by the artist, but it is his nature that seeks dialogue with his environment and his use of technology, and the conversation never ends.
Kaye O’yek
October 2007
visit:
http://ruizabstracts.multiply.com/photos/album/12/econversations_exhibit 
