Aspen Art Museum

In this new publication on Gabriel Rico’s practice, in both English and Spanish, the artist’s work made specifically for his Aspen Art Museum exhibition, The Discipline of the Cave, becomes the focal point. Collecting fragments of contemporary existence, the sculptor and installation artist masterfully recontextualizes familiar objects and materials, and his new pieces were created in response to the architecture of the museum’s ground-floor galleries. Working in an Arte Povera tradition, Rico juxtaposes found items, neon, and taxidermy animals in ways that convey the relationship between humans and the natural environment. Influenced by scientific approaches, geometry, and philosophy, the artist creates non-mathematical equations from objects that reflect our fundamental struggle to achieve balance. Through his process of fusing the natural and kitsch, the artist created a careful arrangement in the AAM Galleries, and Rico’s portrait of contemporary life is astutely reflected in this bilingual Aspen Art Press publication.