A city is often most revered for its physical cityscape, its skyscrapers and other leviathan structures that are seen from miles away. Once inside a city, one might catch a more intimate artistic touch: colorful murals that frequently hint at culture and community.
Jorge Rodriguez-Gerada has created a mural titled COR/CORE, that beautifies the floor of the Parc dels Pins in Santa Coloma de Gramenent, in the city of Barcelona. This anatomical heart is a commemoration to the diverse human beings of the city.
The heart mural is the artist’s ideal of placing enormous emphasis on Barcelona’s 114 nationalities. The heart floor mural IS enormous, covering 1500 square meters. The realistic and vibrant colors of the heart and hands are composed of ninety liters of anti-slip polyurethane paint. The artist required three helpers and ten days to complete this work of art.
One of the most mesmerizing qualities of this artwork is that arteries and veins are included branching out from the literal heart of the circulatory system. This “heart of the city” can be said to represent each human heart beating within the city of Barcelona. The two hands, one on each side of the heart, are barley touching it as though they are a hint of human city structure still evident just not all important. Thus the hands help contain the theme that the heart of Barcelona, as conceptualized by Jorge Rodriguez-Gerada, is the myriad nationalities of its citizens.
Jorge Rodriguez-Gerada is an artist skilled in multidisciplinary forms. He is a contemporary artist, born in Cuba in 1966,and then reared in America. In the early 90’s he founded the Culture Jamming Movement in NYC then began a solo career in 1997. He moved to Barcelona in 2002 where he created large charcoal artworks collectively referred to as the “identity series”. He is revered for large scale artwork in city settings internationally. In 2009, he became the curator of the Urban Art Festival Avant-garde Tudela, in the city of Navarra, Spain.
