MADRID.- Dagoberto Rodríguez affirms that “behind each group or human action, be it a dance, assembly or meeting, behind each human conflict, military squadrons, parades or the arrangement of trenches, there is a hidden geometry that visualizes and explains our relationships in a different way. A geometry that leads us to very primary forms of composition”. Thus, in Geometría Popular, the artist notoriously plays with the importance of forms, the symbolism of fundamental geometric figures and the existential questions of human groups in contemporary culture. The online première of the film Geometría Popular by Dagoberto Rodríguez is now accesible from this link until 5th April.

With a simple narrative, this video piece addresses the staging of three geometric figures and how they relate and confront each other involving the aesthetic and symbolic differences that exist between them. They are still the "forms that haunted the avant-garde and mystics in the past," explains the artist.

The video goes through three phases of human grouping: the square, the triangle and the circle; describing a narrative scheme of anger, peace and submission.

The square, a figure with equal sides and angles, is an egalitarian formation that is, paradoxically, a generator of conflicts. In the symbology, it represents the earth as opposed to the sky. At this point, the play contains clear references to Cuba: the black-and-white shot of people hitting each other and arguing refers to one of the classic films of Cuban cinema, ‘Memorias del subdesarrollo’. "The last scenes", specifies Dagoberto Rodríguez, "when Sergio, the protagonist, is lost in a Cuban fight during the Cuban missile crisis in 1962". In addition, adds the co-founder of the Los Carpinteros art collective, "The training in the box is reminiscent of a vertically organized society, where no one escapes the imposed limits."

The triangle is the stable formation, the firstborn figure. The moment of conflict is resolved with the division of the square and the formation of two triangles. "They are also two islands of opposite thought, with a border separating them" explains the artist. From this point comes peace and with it, silence. Discussion is mediated by negotiation between the two sides.

The circle is an extended point and its properties are also common to those of the point: perfection, equality, absence of division or distinction. The circle is considered in its entirety indivisible, without beginning or end and without any variation. It is a metaphor for eternity, perfection, infinity and the ungraspable. Spontaneously in the room, and through the peace negotiators or implementers, a circle is formed. "The circle is a new order where everyone is aligned, as in a cell," continues the artist.

This choreography in which everyone walks around a circle is a possible example of social organization where we all play a role. The circle expands and contracts but nobody stops marching in its rightful place, in a kind of monotonous social harmony.

"Behind each group or human action, be it a dance, assembly or meeting, behind each human conflict, military squadrons, parades or the arrangement of trenches, there is a hidden geometry that visualizes and explains our relationships in a different way. A geometry that leads us to very primary forms of composition". --Dagoberto Rodríguez

Dagoberto Rodríguez was born in 1969 in Caibarién (Cuba) and graduated from Instituto Superior de Arte (ISA), La Habana (Cuba) in 1994. In 1992 he co-founded the collective Los Carpinteros. He currently works between Madrid and La Habana.

His works have been exhibited in museums and cultural institutions around the world and are part of prominent public collections such as MOMA, Whitney Museum of American Art, Guggenheim New York, Centre Georges Pompidou, Tate Modern and Museo Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, among many others.

Combining architecture, design and sculpture, his work employs humor and irony to comment on core topics in art, politics and society. Watercolor forms a very important part of his creative process, it is a way of registering and revising his ideas. Often these works reflect a fantasy of a possible conceptual situation.