Jose de Jesus Rodriguez

When speaking of density, one would generally consider it as the measure of how much mass is contained in a given volume. Formally, density also alludes to the perceptive weight and distribution of elements within a composition, determining how crowded or sparse an artwork is seen, and the viewer’s response, be it visual or emotional. In his painterly practice, Jose de Jesus Rodriguez plays with density and its registers, whether visual or thematical, weaving images, materials, colors, symbols, and spaces within the ‘volume’ of the canvas.

Having trained and worked as a community muralist in New York, Rodriguez’s work is undeliberately tasked with a muralist art historical tradition, though his approach to painting transcends a mere aesthetic endeavor; it is a form of labor that speaks to both his persona and his surrounding environment. By incorporating the fresco technique and drawing from historical and familiar contexts, he navigates broader implications of identity formation, culture, and elements of tropical kitsch, such as layered mass culture references or urban motifs. This exchange between personal experience and artistic output addresses the ontological question of what it means to create and represent within a given cultural framework. Though visually ahistorical, his use of recurring motifs and formal techniques suggests a calculated strategy of framing and reframing ideas, which actualizes a dialogue between his pieces, making them kin of each other.

Exhibiting for the first time at Deli, Rodriguez’s solo exhibition Long-Winded, captures the tension between the processual rigidity of fresco and what he describes as a ‘clumsy thought process not located within medium specificity.’ A suite of seven paintings, particularly regarded by the artist as ‘distant cousins’, take over the space, each work demanding a full stop for proper visual and content metabolization.

Works such as Someone Marry My Uncle; Nice Guy (2024), layers and peeks four different narratives at once, by combining an apocalyptic landscape, a zoomed cityscape, crammed abstract human figures, and Frodo Bagging’s portrait. The muted collared fresco with subtle drawn baroque details frame all these main events, attempting to even out the different narratives of density [weaved?] in the painting. United, Forever and For Always (2024) strikes stronger historical undertones. Rodriguez sets up a center scene of the Norteño street gang—which originated in his hometown, Salinas, California— posing as a group, blurred by similar features and warm color palette. The mural Partition of the Land (1924) by Mexican muralist, Diego Rivera, is used as a direct formal reference here. Surrounding the Norteño gang are two different landscapes, human bodies, in flesh and clothed form, signaled by the word ‘United’ in a presidential font. La Vida, Loca, and Move over Denzel (both 2024) also visually draw upon Rivera’s mural. Jose de Jesus Rodriguez’ practice is a reflection on being, moralism, and both immediate and imagined communities, inviting viewers to look beyond themselves and think critically about what we assume belongs to us and who we belong to.

Rodriguez’s integration of visual elements and thematic depth simultaneously allows himself and viewers to undergo a recontextualization of cultural symbols and signifiers. Density for Rodriguez is not expressed as mass per unit volume in his work, but rather seen through the lens of proximity, social commentary, class position, and precise craftsmanship.

—Paz Monge

Jose de Jesus Rodriguez (b. 1991, Salinas, California) received his BFA from the University of California in Santa Cruz and his MFA in Painting from the Yale School of Art in New Haven. Rodriguez currently lives and works in New York, NY. In 2017, they were a resident artist at Skowhegan School of Painting Sculpture. Recent group exhibitions include Drop In, M+B Gallery, Los Angeles; Sobre Las Olas with Esteban Ramon Perez, Charles Moffett Gallery, New York; and De Por Vida, Company Gallery, New York. Rodriguez was a 2023 resident at the Sharpe Walentas Studio Program in New York. Long-Winded at Deli Gallery is his first solo exhibition in New York.