Plots

Casas Riegner is pleased to present Plots, the most recent solo exhibition by Luis Roldán. The show brings together drawings, paintings, and sculptures made from found objects, proposing an open-ended journey with no endline but rather endless possibilities.

For Roldán, “a person who paints, by definition, is optical.” Seeing the world with curiosity is at the heart of his practice. In Plots, Roldán draws upon the gaze of other artists. From the French painter Edgar Degas, whom he considers essential to modernity, he takes the idea of drawing as a continuous practice. His own drawings emerge from a daily, repetitive exercise in which a sketch is never finished. From the British artist David Hockney, on the other hand, he is drawn to an inexhaustible curiosity. Both impulses converge in the question of the relationship between brain and hand, since, after years of training, manual articulation gives way to intuition, in an exchange where it is not clear which leads which. In Plots, what steers that connection is color: a pictorial foundation with a voice of its own, opening directions without ever arriving at a conclusion.

The title plays along these lines. Despite his Spanish-speaking context, Roldán chooses a word in English because he likes the way it sounds and because it carries multiple meanings. Literally, plot can be translated to Spanish as the narrative structure of a story. The word reverberates with meanings, offering a weave of possible paths.

Luis Roldán’s artistic practice resists categorization. His work explores abstraction through materials, structures, and final appearance, drawing on diverse references such as art history, literature, music, the street, and the lived experience of his studio. His interest in discarded materials and found objects expands the boundaries of what we understand as abstraction.

Luis Roldán was born in Cali in 1955. He studied Architecture at Universidad Javeriana in Bogotá, Printmaking at Atelier 17 with S.W. Hayter in Paris, and Art History at the École du Louvre in the same city. Among his recent exhibitions are: the International Art Biennial of Antioquia and Medellín, 2025; ¿Qué estoy haciendo aquí?, Bodega Piloto, Bogotá, 2022; Encanto, SN Macarena, Bogotá, 2019; Periplo. Una retrospectiva 1986–2016, Museo de Arte del Banco de la República, Bogotá, 2016; Rompecabezas, Museo La Tertulia, Cali, 2015; Salón Regional Zona Centro, Universidad Nacional, Bogotá, 2015; and Expiación, Fundación Gilberto Alzate Avendaño, Bogotá, 2014.

Opening:

Thursday, September 18, 2025

6:00 p.m.

Calle 70A #7-41