The archival documents bespeak a tension between the real (or imagined) regularity of the grid and the concerted asymmetries of Rosa enferma’s tattered and mournful forms-as if the grid could not contain or protect the rose from the sickness that befell it, dramatizing the petals’ demise. When opening the two drawers of the display cabinet dedicated to Rosa enferma in the exhibition, one noted how the original specimen as well as the petals’ subsequent reproductions at Obregón’s hands display irregular holes, uneven edges, fragments: bounded forms show perforations contours have been penetrated. With Rosa enferma / Disección real the petals’ proximity and physical contiguity instead display a scene of what one might provocatively call “botanical intimacy.” 4 The delicate closeness of the petals’ arrangement on the paper contrasts with the artist’s subsequent use of the grid, calling attention to how the latter identifies, isolates, archives. He also identifies the approximate date of the gift, among other details, including día de lluvia (rainy day), which is written diagonally in the upper margin above the composition, and how the petals were ultimately damaged by an unknown insect. On the paper on which the original forty petals of Rosa enferma / Disección real (Sick rose / Real dissection, 1981–82) are displayed, Obregón notes that the rose was a gift from L. In the face of our current coronavirus pandemic, I would like to pause and think about Obregón’s Rosa enferma (Sick rose), which served as the promotional image for Accumulate, Classify, Preserve, Display, a series of documents and works to which I keep returning. What is more, both artists were affected by the AIDS pandemic, confronted personal loss, and addressed how infection with HIV intensified stigma, discrimination, and denial. That part of the work is pink might trouble some critics, so closely does Obregón’s hue court (if ultimately abstaining from) kitschy effects.” 2 Obregón’s flirtation with kitsch is shared with another artist I love, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, who elegantly indulged in creating displays of beaded curtains and used everyday materials with shiny surfaces, such as silver-wrapped candy. At that time, in a review for Artforum, I noted how “his assembly of real and watercolor rose petals recalls the seriality of some of the biennial’s photographic work but is instead motivated by desire for a universal symbolism that could convey the precarity of life and communication itself. I first encountered Obregón’s work in 2012 (well before I partnered with curator Jesús Fuenmayor on the recent exhibition Accumulate, Classify, Preserve, Display: Roberto Obregón Archive from the Carolina and Fernando Eseverri Collection 1). Obregón harnessed his chosen primary material-rose petals-toward a careful meditation on time and nature while at once imbuing their collection and display with subtle ironies whose coded meanings often hinge on the difference between gestures of cultural alliance and acts of cultural appropriation and the power differentials each entails. Instead, as an artist he engaged in deliberate disidentifications with, and a tenacious resistance to, any stereotype or schema that might attempt to control the meaning of his life and art. While these biographical details may have informed Obregón’s artistic practice, such identifications are not illustrated in his work. He was of Afro-Caribbean heritage, of working-class origins, and of a queer sensibility (likely gay, though he never openly said so). He lived in Caracas, the capital, from 1966 to 1982, when he relocated to the small town of Tarma. He came to artistic maturity in Venezuela, where he moved with his family in 1954. Roberto Obregón was born in the coastal town of Barranquilla, Colombia, in 1946. ![]() (33.3 x 22.9 cm) (artwork © Archivo Roberto Obregón, Colección C&FE, Caracas photograph by Carlos Uzcátegui, provided by Carolina and Fernando Eseverri Collection) Roberto Obregón, Rosa enferma / Disección real (Sick rose / Real dissection), 1981–82, collage of dry rose petals adhered to paper, 13 3/8 x 9 1/8 in.
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