PAULA HARPER

Ph.D., American Art Historian &  Contemporary Art Critic

Rafael Soriano | Other Worlds Within
A Sixty Year Retrospective

“Soriano, in his paintings of the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s, joined in breaking the old rules, in “violating the picture plane,” creating an imaginary, endless, bottomless space.  Within this space, he implied a narrative of shapes that suggest nude bodies and parts of bodies; he multiplied voluptuous curves and hollow and fleshy protuberances that seem to be constantly emerging, fusing and dissolving.  And he used light- a light that emanates from the color in his pictures – as an embracing element.  The resulting images have the beauty and perfection of a newly born world, one that exists in a poetic and even spiritual universe.”

Paula Harper, Ph.D. “The Fullness of Time,” Rafael Soriano:  Other Worlds Within, A Sixty Year Retrospective (The Lowe Art Museum, University of Miami, 2011), 11.