Rodrigo Tafur
(Arequipa, Peru, 1990)
He obtained his Bachelor 's degree with honors from the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, PUCP (2014- LIMA). Between 2015 and 2020 worked in his studio, exploring new forms of painting, jumping from the representational to the abstract, touching on themes associated with landscape and the creation of environments and atmospheres. In these years he participated in two individual shows: Vigilantes Internos (Centro Colich, Lima, 2016) and Umbral (Cecilia González Galería, Lima, 2017), as well as the Two- Person shows: Abstractions and Intensities; two painters talk (Centro Cultural Ricardo Palma, Lima 2016 with Paolo Salvador) and Dialogues (Art.mo, Callao, 2018). In 2019 he obtained the first-place award in the MAPFRE National Painting Prize for the Arts (LIMA - PE) and participated in art residencies such as : Vermont Studio Center (2017 – US), Mudhouse Art Residency (2017 – GRE), Chateaux Orquevaux (2017 – FRA) and MANA Contemporary (2018 – MIA / USA).
During the global pandemic, he radically changed his work, turning to the representation of figurative forms, objects and spaces that, due to the four-month lockdown in Lima, were very present throughout his life in 2020. During this time, he was accepted into Pratt Institute MFA program in New York, however, due to the evident doubts and ambiguities that Covid-19 presented at the time, he decided to carry out a deferral for the following year.
Currently, Rodrigo Tafur is finishing the MFA Painting and Drawing Program at Pratt Institute and lives in Brooklyn - New York. His work has taken the form of dream-making narratives and stands between abstraction and figuration, between drawing and painting, as well as between tragedy and comedy.
Shifting from non-narrative to narrative, oil painting to mixed media and stretched canvas to stronger surfaces like wood and metal. (2022)