Rubén Rodrigo | Area Specularis | Spazio Nuovo

23 April — 27 June 2026

Curated by Guillaume Maître and Paulo Perez Mouriz

Spazio Nuovo is pleased to present Area Specularis, the first solo exhibition in Italy by Rubén Rodrigo (Spain, 1980). The artist constructs his painting on an unstable equilibrium, where control and chance intertwine until they become indistinguishable. The gesture arises as an open process: a form of guided improvisation that lets the image happen while directing it. Color, often reduced to near-monochrome fields, does not merely occupy the surface but traverses it through drips and fluid stratifications that continuously alter perception.

The canvas becomes a field of minimal tensions, where the mark forms through variations, flows, and suspensions. Pause, ellipsis, and time function not as compositional elements but as active forces regulating the work’s internal rhythm. Light and shadow also act as structural agents, capable of transforming pictorial matter into a volatile, ever-moving system.

The exhibition, featuring 12 works, introduces the notion of area specularis as a space of observation and reflection, where painting is configured as a threshold between internal and external vision. The device of the window becomes a central reading element, activating a perceptual condition in which the image constructs itself as a surface of passage and refraction.

Within this dynamic, Rodrigo’s work also develops through the form of the diptych, understood as a relational structure in which chromatic fields respond to and transform one another. Color appears as fluid matter, subject to movements of flow, expansion, and dissolution, continuously redefining its limits and stability.

Spazio Nuovo
Via d’Ascanio 20, 00186 Roma