Franklin Parrasch gallery is pleased to present Echo’s in Talavera, an exhibition of new work by Rafael Delacruz (b. 1989, San Francisco, CA) in conversation with ceramic sculpture and works on paper by Ken Price (1935-2012).

Rafael Delacruz considers a post-digital world by way of traditional means as he weaves surreal narratives in his canvases. Delacruz’s works, which typically employ painterly brushstrokes in tandem with flattened, screen-printed imagery, emulate a distorted and surreal, pixelated world of nomadic existence. Often rendered head-on, Delacruz mines a steady vernacular of near-universal, clip art-like icons; most common are day-to-day staples (e.g. apples, coffee mugs, baseball caps, sinks, and beds) and vehicular references (e.g. buses, cars, tires, shopping carts, and flying contraptions). Rather than imagined or implied space, these images appear to dictate both narrative hierarchy and visual outcomes. Within each piece, Delacruz rejects stylistic monotony in deference to dynamism and effect, and obscures and reveals information and events in vital syncopation. In many works, painted fields of color nestle into one another like fieldstones, establishing physical and emotional atmospheres and providing compositional (and, occasionally, literal) screens for the scenes unfolding within.

Delacruz considers the impact of Ken Price upon his work in this statement [linked here].