In his Conceito abstrato series, however, Rodrigo Torres turns to the abstract, using the shapes, numbers, lines, and subtle colors of international currencies to create non-representational forms with lavish geometries and baroque curving forms.
Brazilian artist Rodrigo Torres has been deconstructing international paper currencies to form intricate collages of color, line, shape, and texture for several years. Torres’ works are masterfully intricate, as the artist isolates out curves, characters, architectures, and geometries from the delicate designs on money, cutting and slicing them apart only to piece them back together into his own careful constructions. Cobbling together these subdued colored bits into fanciful compositions, Torres’ work can be read as an outcropping and a critique of our globalized economy. In many of these collage works, Torres creates narrative scenes, generating apocalyptic scenes, dimensional tornados, and forests out of repurposed bills.
The wall installation Friction/Where is Lavatory (2005) plays off anxieties about time but utilizes sound to create a disconcerting experience of viewership: comprised of dozens of wall clocks sutured together, the work presents a monstrous vision of time at its most monumental...