TEXT BY MICHAELA MULLIN | VIEW IMAGES
It’s A Living is not just a statement, it is also a life philosophy for designer and artist, Ricardo Gonzalez. His signature script style can be easily recognized from large-scale murals to commercial work for some of the biggest brands, to a simple sticker in the streets. The ambiguity in his typographical messages continually creates dialogue between viewer and artwork.
Gonzalez paints with controlled speed and frames his compositions with a basic splendor. His oval works, titled “Living 1, 2, and 3,” are reminiscent of antique portraits or silhouette cut outs. Nothing gilded here, but black text which runs into itself and illegibility, and offers a centered subject for the bright yellow, pink, and blue respective backgrounds.
He has also created new paintings in acrylic on square and circular canvases. The latter, such as the decadent “Stay Gold,” take up the entire large 40-inch-diameter-dots of space, painted to the edges, whether its phrase or word fits—like a zooming in on a larger paragraph. “Dance Until the Sun Comes Up” and “The Sky Is the Limit” are written upon different blue backgrounds. The first, a slightly darker, hint-of-night-infused blue, while the second of these is upon a lighter sky blue. And “Under the Setting Sun” finds its title spread across a peachy sky, sun-shaped and clouded over by letters. Many of the works in this series enact parts of their titles in smart and subtle ways.
His two larger square paintings, “Feels Like Coming Home,” and “Soon the Rush Went Away,” are more centered, and any unwritten-upon colored space is filled with paint spatter, covering the canvas like the mist it began as. Gonzalez blurs the category and concept of text-based art by using cursive that defies the idea of text as readable script.
The cursive script that younger generations rarely use thanks to keyboards and keypads, in Gonzalez’s hand, verges on asemic writing (without meaning). Words and phrases he chooses, however, are very intentional, and their original meanings take new shape and context through the creation process, ultimate siting, and viewing.
And exciting news for our metro area: While in Des Moines for his two-person exhibit, Gonzalez completed a large interior mural for MVP Sports on Park Avenue. The owners of the multi-purpose indoor sports center were excited to have Gonzalez capture the spirit of the many teams and community spirit they see there, where people are playing and competing “with passion,” as the mural states.
Exhibit Images
