Originally from Puerto Rico and educated at the Chicago Art Institute, Arnaldo Roche brings to the Museum of Latin American Art his densely layered, large-scale paintings, in which “trauma plays an important role,” the artist says, and not without reason. When Roche (the youngest of six children) was 14, his brother Felix had a schizophrenic episode during which he took his father’s gun and shot and killed his sister. Roche pulls from the example of painters before him with similar demons to exorcise: Vincent van Gogh and Goya. The paintings have been described as highly visceral, traumatic and full of light—as well as, one can imagine, darkness.
Tuesdays-Sundays, 11:30 a.m. Starts: Nov. 9. Continues through March 22, 2008
