LIKE COMMON PEOPLE

Art has an audience, a gallery and a purpose, but Jorge Rodriguez Gerada challenges our preconceptions of all these things in his urban murals that render common people in charcoal on giant town walls. They become local  icons overnight. Each protagonist is taken from the streets of his or her own neighbourhood. Days later, their faces adorn one of its walls.

His art is not so much about the charcoal drawing as the process: the search for a city, a building, the person that not only represents the locality but is also happy to have his or her fifteen minutes of fame, and  the deterioration of the charcoal because of time or rain. They become David to the Goliath of advertising, politics or even large scale commissioned art in public spaces.

A Cuban living in the U.S., Gerada is fascinated by  the idea of personal identity. All his work concerns its fragility and the ease with which it can chop and change. But we won't try and interpret it any further. Instead, we'll  leave it to the man himself: