Barrios Rafael
Rafael Barrios’s geometric sculptures manipulate the eye into seeing depth in flat sheets of brightly colored metal. Adopting a sculptural vernacular pioneered by such figures as Joel Shapiro, Barrios subverts the three-dimensional essence of sculpture by shaping planar sheets to resemble carefully stacked and engineered objects. Such works often appear in public contexts, such as Park Avenue in New York. Though positioned as sculpture, his work’s Op Art elements equally align it with painting, effectively blurring the boundaries between the two media.
Rafael Barrios is an American-Venezuelan artist best known for his large-scale public sculptures. Influenced by Alexander Calder, Barrios creates brightly colored geometric metal forms that appear to defy gravity in their construction. “Art without audience does not exist,” Barrios has said. “No matter what you build in your life, it’s a public act.”
Born in Baton Rouge, LA, he was raised in Venezuela, before going on to study at New York University. Today, the artist lives and works between Miami, FL and Caracas, Venezuela. His works are found in the collections of the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Caracas and the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto.