CARLOS RIGAU: ENDLESS EVERGLADES
MAY 14–OCTOBER 23, 2022
Hernando’s Hideaway for the first time presents two solo exhibitions in its spaces: R. Geste: Agnes, a new work for the Sculpture Lawn and an installation by Carlos Rigau: Endless Everglades in the Garage Gallery. The works by the artists connect Hernando’s spaces by way of nature and ruin. Though aesthetically and conceptually distinct, their materials and language reference the temporality of the landscape and foundation surrounding them.
Part of an ongoing body of work, Carlos Rigau’s Endless Everglades is an immersive sculptural installation built of furniture-grade PVC, neon green plexiglas, with video projections of footage shot in various locations in the Florida Everglades. Scaled to the dimensions of the garage gallery space, the artifice of a working water fountain cites the miles of PVC pipes under local roads and canals that serve to run water from Lake Okeechobee into the Southern Everglades. In its closed-system of water circulation, Rigau creates an illusion of preservation. The founding serves only to maintain the life of a single, lone Money Tree plant. Simultaneously, the pursuit is deemed likely to fail by the chaos and language that fill the empty spaces of the structure and dance across the gallery walls. It’s the illusion of movement being in a fixed state when the very life at stake cannot be sustained in such an environment. Such as those manmade roads and pathways bisect and disrupt the natural egress of water through bedrock of porous limestone from Lake Okeechobee to our homes, nothing is endless that can’t be contained.
Special thanks to David Lifshultz and Joshua Lifshultz of Miami Beach, Simon Armengol, Òscar Càrdenas, Eduardo Consuegra, Alberto Cruz, Jorge Luis Cruz, Alex Delgado, Juan Gonsalez, Terrel Hopkins, Mario Ramos, and the Miami-Dade Department of Cultural Affairs Miami Independent Artist (MIA) Stipend for helping us realize this work.
Carlos Rigau was born and raised in Little Havana in Miami, Florida. Rigau holds a double major in Fine Art and Television Communications from Florida International University, Miami and a MFA from Hunter College, New York. Rigau has exhibited in Berlin, New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Miami; participated in residencies and fellowships at Acadia Summer Arts Program {Kamp Kippy}; Everglades AIRE, Miami; Fountainhead, Miami; A.I.M., Bronx Museum, Bronx, NY; and The Deering Estate, Miami. He was a Media Arts Fellow at BRIC in Brooklyn NY, and was the recipient of a New York Foundation for the Arts Grant.