DEMI | Tabula Rasa

May 4 - June 29, 2024

Thoughts on "The Fall" by Demi

by Wendy M. Blazier

DEMI,

The Fall, 2018-2020

Acrylic on linen, 107x102 inches

Demi’s luminous painting “The Fall” is a masterpiece of profound artistic achievement. Bejeweled with fruit that glows like rubies, Demi’s shimmering apple tree becomes a symbol of life, knowledge, renewal, immortality, temptation, and the fall.

It is a portrait of the artist’s consciousness. “I only paint children…I do not paint reality. I paint the child that reality gave me…” And since childhood, reality has given Demi an epic visual poem about life and loss, and expectations and fears. Like the enchantment of a dream, “The Fall” reveals a rarified view of the way life inspires and teaches us.

Ladders radiate from Demi’s apple tree. Perhaps they are a biblical allusion to Jacob’s Ladder (Genesis 28:10-19), a bridge between earth and heaven, and life and death. The ladders make the orchard setting evoke the Garden of Eden, a place of abundant life from which the artist’s spirit draws. We see curious children with huge magnifying glasses exploring the world and searching for answers. Demi’s fecund, blossoming tree becomes a vessel of meaning and wisdom, expressing the inexpressible, exploring the depths of human psyche and the profound connection between the human spirit and the natural world.

“The Fall” is also a beautiful fairytale. Demi’s visionary apple tree records a rich and long and storied life. We see Demi’s labyrinth of life experiences, family scenes, parties, friends, moons, monsters and masks. In the center, a child tumbles downward, like one of God’s fallen angels. Or is this Icarus from Ovid's Metamorphose, plummeting from the sky after flying too close to the sun? And, beneath the tree, as if in a winter sleep, this same child reclines and dreams.

Searching, magnified eyes watch over her. We see the moon keeping her eye on the passage of life, and guiding us through states of awareness, as well as fatigue and drowsiness. We can smell the heady perfume of apples, sense the strangeness of the world, and embrace the life depicted here.

Never before exhibited, “The Fall” is one of three important large works completed by the artist between 2018 and 2020. Its two companion paintings are “Light versus Darkness” (private collection), and “Big Storm” in the permanent collection of the Art Museum of the Americas of the Organization of American States, Washington D.C.

Wendy M. Blazier

Miami, Florida

May 2024

Wendy M. Blazier is an art historian, published writer, lecturer and independent curator. Born in Detroit, Michigan, Ms. Blazier served as Executive Director and Curator at the Art and Culture Center of Hollywood, Florida 1979-1995 and as Senior Curator at the Boca Raton Museum of Art, Boca Raton, Florida 2001-2012.

DEMI

The Fall, 2018-2020

Acrylic on linen, 107x102 inches

Installation view in "Demi | Tabula Rasa" exhibition

at Aliona Ortega Fine Art

"After Apple-Picking"

(Robert Frost, 1914)

My long two-pointed ladder's sticking through a tree

Toward heaven still,

And there's a barrel that I didn't fill

Beside it, and there may be two or three

Apples I didn't pick upon some bough.

But I am done with apple-picking now.

Essence of winter sleep is on the night,

The scent of apples: I am drowsing off.

I cannot rub the strangeness from my sight

I got from looking through a pane of glass

I skimmed this morning from the drinking trough

And held against the world of hoary grass.

It melted, and I let it fall and break.

But I was well

Upon my way to sleep before it fell,

And I could tell

What form my dreaming was about to take.

Magnified apples appear and disappear,

Stem end and blossom end,

And every fleck of russet showing clear.

My instep arch not only keeps the ache,

It keeps the pressure of a ladder-round.

My instep arch not only keeps the ache,

It keeps the pressure of a ladder-round.

I feel the ladder sway as the boughs bend.

And I keep hearing from the cellar bin

The rumbling sound

Of load on load of apples coming in.

For I have had too much

Of apple-picking: I am overtired

Of the great harvest I myself desired.

There were ten thousand thousand fruit to touch,

Cherish in hand, lift down, and not let fall.

For all

That struck the earth,

No matter if not bruised or spiked with stubble,

Went surely to the cider-apple heap

As of no worth.

One can see what will trouble

This sleep of mine, whatever sleep it is.

Were he not gone,

The woodchuck could say whether it's like his

Long sleep, as I describe its coming on,

Or just some human sleep.

DEMI, The Big Storm - 2020-2021

acrylic on canvas 98x104 inches

Permanent Collection

Art Museum of the Americas, Washington D.C.

“For me, this exhibition “Tabula Rasa” has a lot of personal meaning, and is also a new beginning. In 2022, my two sisters died – one from COVID, and the other from cancer. I felt completely destroyed as a person and as an artist. My two sisters represented for me my muses. They never grew old. In my mind they were part of a terrible event in my life as a child. As I have said before, my paintings blossom from the inner depths of my childhood memories. My two sisters were representatives of my childhood on this earth. When they died, I stopped painting… except for finishing up the large murals. With this exhibition, I have a new beginning.” - Demi

DEMI,

Light versus Darkness, 2020-2021,

Acrylic on linen, 91x72 inches

Private Collection

The title of our exhibition “Tabula Rasa” translates from Latin as “a clean slate”. The exhibition is comprised of the Demi’s recent works, some of which were painted during the COVID-19 pandemic (2020-2022), and represent a shift in the artist’s oeuvre. During the pandemic lockdown, Demi decided to paint on unstretched linen creating three significant large-scale murals. Two of the three murals, “Light versus Darkness” and “The Big Storm”, have been exhibited at the Art Museum of the Americas in Washington D.C., as part of the prestigious Organization of American States (OAS) program. “The Big Storm” is included in the Museum’s permanent collection. The third mural, “The Fall”, is exhibited for the first time in this exhibition.

Art Museum of the Americas, Organization of American States

Washington D.C.

DEMI at her studio working on "Light versus Darkness",

March 2021, Miami, Florida

Demi’s work has been critically acclaimed throughout her artistic career spanning over 35 years. Her work is often used to raise awareness for children’s rights. The Smithsonian's Archives of American Art has collected Demi's primary records since 1998. Demi's work is included in the permanent collections of Art Museum of The Americas (OAS), Washington, DC; American Art Museum (Smithsonian); The Ronald H. Cordover Family Foundation, New York, New York; Lowe Art Museum, University of Miami, Florida; Museum of Art, Fort Lauderdale, Florida; Gulf Coast Museum of Art, Largo, Florida; The Frost Art Museum, Miami, Florida; Tampa Museum of Art; City of Orlando, Florida; Miami Main Public Library, Miami, Florida.

DEMI | Tabula Rasa

Installation view at Aliona Ortega Fine Art

Exhibition Catalog

Click on the image to peruse the exhibition catalog online.

Click on the button below to download the PDF version of the catalog onto your device:

Exhibition Catalog (PDF)

IN THE PRESS

Tabula rasa’, la más reciente exposición personal de Demi

Tabula Rasa, Demi's Latest Personal Exhibition

by Janet Batet, El Nuevo Herald, May 2, 2024

"Approaching the universe of Demi Rodriguez (Camaguey, 1955) is like entering a thick forest where dreaming and reality are confused by creating that feeling of disturbing fantasy that forces us to look within ourselves. Demi's works are works reminiscent of the Bosch, and Klimt, and Chagall. We attend a sort of inner beastly where the whimsical compositions, the energy of color and symbolism open sidewalk to a world at a fascinating and terrifying time..."