Derivas sobre fondo I embodies movement record painting where lines, planes and marks appear as traces of actions without destination—each colorful gesture documenting wandering rather than purposeful movement, recording contemporary experience of navigation without fixed endpoints. Etem's abstract work initiates series exploring how form traverses space: first composition establishing vocabulary of drifting marks where background actively shapes wandering gestures rather than passively receiving them. This painting materializes how daily experience operates in diluted territories: just as new technologies dissolve geography into continuous screen-based traversal, marks derive across surface without predetermined destinations, background field participating in shaping each drift. Derivas I questions through abstraction how we navigate contemporary existence—movements recorded as traces rather than achievements, wanderings valued over arrivals, backgrounds recognized as active participants rather than neutral supports, creating meeting place between atoms (physical marks) and bits (conceptual drifting) through abstract geometry documenting experiences of territories defined by fluid communication ways.
Derivas sobre fondo brings together a series of compositions in which form does not impose itself on space, but rather traverses it. Lines, planes, and marks appear as records of a movement without destination, straining the relationship between surface and gesture. The background does not function as a passive support, but rather as an active field that absorbs, deflects, and shapes each action.
Movement record painting documenting wandering without destination—traces of drifting gestures across active field. Derivas sobre fondo I by Rodrigo Etem. Available at The Art Design Project, Miami Beach.
Movement Record Painting – Derivas sobre fondo I, 2025 by Rodrigo Etem
Derivas sobre fondo I, 2025
From Derivas sobre fondo series (Drift on the background series)
Mixed media (acrylic and spray paint on canvas)
Dimensions: 39.3 H x 39.3 W x 1 D in.
Mounted on stretcher
Rodrigo Etem was born in 1977 in Mendoza, Argentina, he studied Administration at the Universidad del Aconcagua. He attended workshops with Fabiana Barreda, Esteban Álvarez, Ananké Asseff, Eugenio Echeverría (Spain). He received grants from the Fondo Nacional de las Artes, Fondo Argentino de Desarrollo Cultural, Fondo Provincial de Cultura, Ministerio de Cultura de la Nación. His work surreptitiously investigates and works on concepts that seek to disseminate questions about our daily experience. The artist held solo exhibitions such as: “Hasta encontrar otro amarillo” (Imagen Galería, Mendoza 2018), “Instrucciones para no hacer nada” (Espacio Rivadavia 645, Mendoza 2016), “Probable” (Casa Colmena, Mendoza 2016), “Ser Cosa” (Museo Pumapungo Cuenca, Ecuador 2015), “Ser Cosa” (Museo Antropológico y de Arte Contemporáneo, Guayaquil. Ecuador 2012).He has also participated in numerous group exhibitions. Highlights: “La marca original” (CCK, Buenos Aires 2019), “Poéticas Políticas” (Parque de la Memoria, Buenos Aires 2016), “Dura lex sed lex” (Bienal Sur. Centro Cultural Parque de España, Rosario)
