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Alexis Rago- (born 1959) is a British artist working in a number of mediums concentrating in recent years on ceramic sculpture.
Life and Early Work
Alexis Rago was born in Rome, Italy, son of Venezuelan parents Mariela Perez de Rago (née Perez Castillo) and pianist and composer Alexis Rago. His grandfather was Juan Pablo Perez Alfonso, Venezuelnan Oil Minister (1903 – 1979) and co-founder of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC).
He graduated in Biology at Manchester University in 1980[1] and subsequently travelled to Florence, Italy where he studied at the Institute for Art and Restoration, Palazzo Spinelli. Married painter Janet Waring in 1983 in [Florence]. Lived in Tuscany until 1991 when he moved to the UK establishing a studio in a decomissioned chapel in rural Lincolnshire. [1]
While in Italy he exhibited paintings continually changing pictorial styles. In the early 2000's he dedicated time to developing pinhole photography before starting work on ceramic pieces. In 2009 he was elected a Fellow of the Linnean Society of London.
Current Work
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Alexis Rago work is concerned with expressing many ideas by assimilating them and creating objects of the mind that are subsequently rendered in concrete form in single objects.[2] He first exhibited ceramics in 2008 and since then he has built a body of work that, as Simon Olding describes in the exhibition Chaos Contained, is pleasantly difficult to categorise. Rago's eclectic influences including archaeology, anthropology and sacred art underpinned by science and natural history.
His use of clay is particularly direct relying on simple techniques such as modelling and used the process of accretion and piercing to explore volume as both an exterior and interior phenomenon. The use of clay is a conscious use of the material's potential as a source for metaphors, particularly the tension between fragility and durability that he sees as representing life; a continuous thread in his work. He also sees the material as a rich source of metaphor.
His sculptures range from very small pieces to large scale sculptures over two metres high typically characterised by intricate surface detail and radial symmetry along a vertical axis which he says was inspired by the evolution of different body plans during the Cambrian period over 500 million years ago. His latest work (from 2013) Rago has incorporated digital media in his work as a means of extending the spectrum of experience. This includes incorporating digital sound in the body of sculptures and the projection of moving images onto the intricate surface of works. This work together with earlier ones is currently curated as a touring show by the National Centre for Craft and Design (UK).[3]
References