No Sugar No Milk

A solo show at Joymore Gallery, Brooklyn, NY. Oct. – Nov. 2005

“Without milk and sugar is how I order my coffee in New York. A power shot of caffeine in a big cup of water, hot enough to burn my tongue, hurt my stomach and keep me electrified for hours to come.”
No Sugar No Milk is a show staged as a tale, an abstractly graphic narrative about the cultural trauma of being in the center of the universe - yet perceiving it from a big city, the only real place.
In this show one can see:
1 - A view from a place impossible to be in: the center of the Milky Way galaxy.
2 - A view from an everyday place, as a large wall drawing showing an oneiric cityscape with buildings, highways, cars and a space shuttle. The big city displayed as a gigantic desert, a place for vehicles and floating pathways.
Looking for the nostalgic remains of Modernism, Roque draws, as in a copy-paste process, the barren aesthetics of contemporary city sights. The city, here as elsewhere, is the center of a personal perceptive universe, encircling one’s perspectives, possibilities and limitations.

CARLOS ROQUE (New Yorker pick)
Graffiti tags, isolated and remixed for gallery walls, take on an acid elegance in Roque’s drawings. Floating like visible whispers across urban landscapes dotted with high-rise apartment blocks, parked or junked cars, and street signs, Roque’s designs take on a ghostly, calligraphic quality without altering their original found forms. A large graffiti landscape here is accompanied by a room-wrapping wall drawing of asterisk-and-dot-shaped stars, black against the white “sky” of the walls. Hanging from the ceiling in the middle of the space is a turntable playing the soundtrack to “2001: A Space Odyssey.” It’s perhaps too pat, but evocative nonetheless. Through Nov. 14. (Joymore, 236 Grand St. 646-270-0376.)
New Yorker
Issue of 2005-11-14
Posted 2005-11-07