Fredric Snitzer Gallery is pleased to present Prototyping Actuality, an exhibition by Rafael Rodriguez Gárciga. Working within the intersection of art and technology, Prototyping Actuality is the gallery’s first time exhibiting NFT technology in combination with 3D printing. The two technologies are being used in tandem in a new project that challenges the techno-scientific paradigm as our primary mode of access to reality, while questioning arts capacity to exemplify and disrupt the reality brought about by techno-science.
The exhibition presents NFT’s along with a soft-robotic installation, 3D printed prototypes made of auxetic mechanical metamaterials that can be freely shaped and modeled to create infinite variations, and holographic fans featuring 3D renderings of themselves. In addition, Rodriguez has converted the secondary gallery space into a laboratory to produce additional objects onsite for the duration of the exhibition.
Prototyping Actuality enacts a shift that is taking place in our contemporary reality, where technology and science are becoming indiscernible. Using the very concept of the prototype to enact the transition from the possible to the actual, Rodriguez argues that actuality becomes prototyped when there is a proliferation of possibilities brought about by the ubiquity of digital technologies. “The question is whether or not art in its current form could actually disrupt that reality,” says Rodriguez Gárciga.
“I am trying to pose these questions in a way that you could experience that. The prototypes represent this bridge from digital data to a rendered physical object. In this way, the exhibition facilitates the shift from the possible to the actual. The fans, for example, are a reference to the actual – it’s a digital image that is being pulled into reality through the use of technology. I am also not talking about one aspect, but this intersection of the physicality of the actual objects and the possibilities inherent to digital production. It is the bridge between them that I am most interested in. The exhibition is about that passage.”
Rafael Rodriguez Gárciga (b. 1988, Havana, Cuba) is an artist based in Miami, FL. Rodriguez Gárciga graduated from the National Academy of Fine Arts San Alejandro (2009) and the New World School of Arts (2018). He works primarily with 3D printing and augmented reality, dealing with issues tied to the function of art within Western thinking. Gárciga has exhibited work in the Sculpture Garden at Fredric Snitzer Gallery, Miami, FL (2021); Futurama Gallery, Miami, FL (2014); Artrageous Gallery, Miami, FL (2013); Fredric Snitzer Gallery, Miami, FL (2018); Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation, Miami, FL (2018); Miami Biennale (2016); Yard@CasaLin, Miami, FL (2016); GUCCIVUITTON, Miami, FL (2016); Aluna Art Foundation, Miami, FL (2014); Paragon Art Gallery, Miami, FL (2012); 10th Havana Biennial, Cuba (2009).
