Melquiades Rosario Sastre
MELQUIADES ROSARIO SASTRE

Biography


Sculptor, cartoonist, graphic artist, and for the past three years Melquiades Rosario Sastre has devoted more time to painting and metal sculpture. He received his art education at the School of Plastic Arts in Puerto Rico (1975-1978) and the Art Students League of New York (1981). In 1982, he founded the Association of Sculptors of Puerto Rico. In 1989 he received the Pollock-Krasner Fellowship, in 2006 the Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors Grant, and the 1999 APAP-AIAP Unesco Medal for artistic excellence. He has been a professor at the School of Fine Arts PR, the League of Art Students of San Juan and the University of Puerto Rico. In addition to participating in international events, such as the 2nd meeting of sculptors in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico; Havana Biennial (1986); the San Juan Poly/Graphic Triennial (2004); Caribbean Art 2012-2013 at the Crossroads of the World, Queens Museum of Art, NY, June 17, 2012-January 6, 2013; and Debtfair/Occupy Museum Project, The Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art, NY, March 14, 2017. In 2006, he was a resident artist at the Vermont Studio Center. 


Project Description

Euclidean Space

In the beginning, my work was created by the technique of assembling the parts into a whole, it occurred to me to cut pieces of black cardboard and place them on the wooden block so that I knew what I had to remove from it. Using this method, I have continued to create wood sculptures inspired by the organic forms of nature. Their fractal patterns and their isometric designs, show my way of working and how I created a way of thinking appropriate to this creation. Carving each piece as part of a set, assembled and placed in a serpentine manner, using the natural colors of them, I have integrated color in my sculptures which is a project of great interest in the creation of my new works and would provide a renewal in my artistic work. Always restless and an explorer of new possibilities, I see the different textures and hardnesses that allow an interrelation with the work and its background as a common space, where they manifest the qualities that allow the sculpture to stand out as an image or as a background. Creating from this idea forms a dynamic relationship between the two states. I think that the shape of the sculpture comes through the negative space because this is the way in which the three-dimensional shapes in the space are structured. Thinking through the void is a way in which I have mentally structured myself to develop these sculptures, a way of reflecting to visualize the "intangible space as a contained void." Starting from this, I intend to make an exhibition of recent works with these conceptual bases which would give a new creative breath to my work. "Euclidean Space" will be a series of sculptures made in different media that explore the thought that I have kept as a thread in my concepts of art.

The grant will provide me with the opportunity to obtain the carving gouges and machinery that I lost in the last storm Maria and buy the native woods that have always been present in my sculptures. In this way, my work can continue advancing internationally and my artistic well-being would be in a better state because it would give me the opportunity to continue creating.