“The Four Harmonious Friends: an elephant, a monkey, a hare and a partridge,” by Ruben Urrea Moreno
As a small boy, Tucson native Ruben Urrea Moreno regularly spent weekends at his grandmother’s house. No other children lived nearby, so he was encouraged to draw with the materials she supplied for him. “Being in that environment naturally cultivated me sitting down and entertaining myself. I owe a lot to my grandmother.”
He credits this as the impetus for his adult artistic endeavors. In high school, Moreno won an art competition to go to a college art class, but that was the extent of his formal education. “I wanted to go to art school, but it wasn’t in the family budget.”
Moreno creates with mixed mediums; his series of 22 works on display at Contreras Gallery this month combine charcoal, Prisma Color pencils, oil and chalk pastel, and oil paint. The exhibit, “Socratic Codices: The Eleven Eleven Series,” derives its title from Ruben’s fascination with “dynamic sets of individual, yet collective, members of a family.” He set about collecting examples of “coherent families of four elements.”
These include the familiar and the exotic, the mundane and the supernatural. At the age of 13, Moreno first became aware of how often he noticed “11:11.” Wanting to decipher what appeared to be a message, he says, “I decided I would explore the number and come up with my own meaning for it. This is what 11:11 means to me, families of four ones.” This led to his 23 year fascination with the show’s theme, demonstrating his rigorous and exacting exploration of the underlying intellectual ideas.
Moreno is attempting, as he eloquently describes in his artist’s statement, “to intervene on behalf of society and Nature to highlight the connection we have between the two, but that is so easily forgotten.” And so floats before us a perfectly proportioned and elegant array of symbolic storytelling. His delicately rendered illustrations combine mythology, religion and cultural images.
“The concepts are inspired by things that already exist,” Moreno explains. “I didn’t create it. I’m just bringing it to light.”
With exquisite draftsmanship, a restrained color palette that ties each individual painting to its companions, an unerring sense of composition, a surprising and singular lack of any artistic clichés whatsoever, an ability to convey motion and emotion, Moreno has created what amounts to an epic narrative, a saga. And he has done it without resorting to magnification; the works are modest in size, painted on smooth birch panels.
The sets include The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, The Four Noble Truths, The Four Natural Forces, The Four Negative Qualities, The Four Oceans, and so forth. Ultimately, he plans 80 paintings to explore what might be called the “Universe of Four.”
The show runs November 2-26, with an opening reception on November 5 from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. Contreras Gallery is located at 110 E. 6th St., and ContrerasHouseFineArt.com or call 398-6557. Visit Moreno’s online home at RubenUrreaMoreno.com.
