The Bridge Memory:

The bridge memory: some clues to read Manuel Rodriguez Vega In all there are some genuine artistic work reading keys that function as keys to access the expressive content of the author and creative motivations. Here we hope to offer some clues about the work of our friend Manuel Rodriguez Vega, now gives us some memories about his childhood in Barrio Cantera de Ponce. The first key word is just the memory, because on that cornerstone is built his entire proposal.Let us define memory as the human faculty that throws us into the past in order to decipher this. He is the son of the child, said Nietzche. Yes it is, because everything that touches us in childhood builds us. To a large extent we are what we hear, we touch, we learn, enjoy and suffer when we were innocent. What we see from the purity is the substrate of our personality. We are because we can remember. Our memory takes us by the hand like a father, by the way of life. Even the geography where we live is installed, forming deep our bridges, rivers and houses. We are made of memories. In this exhibition we see as a symbolic reference Manuel main architectural structure of his memories: the bridge. It is a suspension bridge built with concrete piles, steel cables, wooden planks and cyclone fence that traveled countless times and it was like a big toy for him. This bridge no longer exists in the neighborhood but lives inside of our artist.And now he wants to speak and say something about Billy, as he still called his old friends from Manuel Cantera. The function of each bridge is to connect two sites divided by the topography of a site facilitating human communication. This bridge linking two communities where they lived their family and friends. For Billy it was as an observation point that allowed him to capture all environmental perspective: the suburbs, the ball park far away in the middle of a barren and dry land where once there were crops of sugarcane. Also, macag itas giant trees and a mountain of waste land in the urban revolution result of Ponce to the ’70s, tells us. From the bridge watching the daily operations of the population, natural disasters, fires, floods … A people proud of their origin and with a particular idiosyncrasy. From the fields, many struggled to adjust to new life in the city.But this bridge is more than a memory: it is the symbol of the memory itself involved in constructive activity of the personality of the man, husband, father and artist is Manuel. Remember the bridge from childhood is a bridge between present and past. Is to revisit, reconstruct, analyze what we have been finding out why and what we want to be. Another important interpretative key to reading this colleague of ours. The book before us is not easy. Our friend was very demanding on himself as an artist and requires much the viewer as interpreter. We see his works where there are tensions and strains, figure and abstraction. (A valuable related resource: Maida Vale). Rich textures that speak of his fondness for writing poetry two-dimensional surface through the juxtaposition of paint layers and experimentation with industrial materials.In this series there is a discourse based on fragments of an exterior landscape transformed by an operation now subjective introspection encoded by the boards of the bridge, the knots in the wood of these tables, lines, furrows of design, high voltage cables , spots and textures of stone or cement, water reflections, etc.