Sperone Westwater is pleased to present “La Luz de Alante” (The Light Ahead), the gallery’s first solo exhibition of Puerto Rican artist Gamaliel Rodríguez. The show features Rodríguez’s recent work, exploring themes of ecological transformation, colonial legacies and the precarious balance between nature and industry in the Caribbean.

The exhibition title refers to a Puerto Rican saying, “La luz de alante es la que alumbra”— “The light ahead is the one that shines.” This phrase underscores the importance of taking initiative and seizing opportunities, rather than waiting for the perfect moment, a guiding principle in Rodríguez’s work as he navigates the complexities of life and artistic practice in Puerto Rico.

Over the past year, Rodríguez traveled to Guadeloupe to study plant life, and to compare cultures and landscapes there. Through his paintings and large-scale drawings in graphite, acrylic and ballpoint pen, he depicts the region’s evolving environment, where nature and man-made structures coexist in a fragile equilibrium. His ghostly, dystopian landscapes are littered with fragments of industrial, religious and tourist buildings overtaken by nature, reflecting economic and infrastructural decay.

Works such as The light tree Livistona australis on Guadeloupe soil (2025) and The great survival (2022) have a distinctly romantic sensibility, centering the tropical landscape as both protagonist and witness to socio-political shifts. Rodriguez’s fluorescent depictions of plantain and breadfruit recall their fraught colonial histories—they were introduced to Puerto Rico as sustenance for enslaved people. In paintings such as El incandecente Cocos nucifera (2025), radiant palm trees seemingly glow from within, alluding to both the contamination left behind by energy companies and the resilience of the island’s natural ecosystem. His work compels us to reconsider these lifeforms as both agents of history and silent observers of environmental change.

“La Luz de Alante” (The Light Ahead) invites viewers to reconsider the hidden narratives embedded in the Caribbean’s landscape, offering a poignant meditation on resilience, decay and the enduring power of nature while posing urgent questions about Puerto Rico’s future in the face of climate change and economic dependence on the United States.

Born in Puerto Rico, Gamaliel Rodríguez lives and works between Cabo Rojo, PR and the Bronx, NY. He received his MFA from the Kent Institute of Art and Design, UK (2005) and his BA from the Universidad del Sagrado Corazón, San Juan (2004). In 2011, he attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. Solo exhibitions have been presented at the Center for Maine Contemporary Art, Rockland (2023-24); MASS MoCA (2020); SCAD Museum of Art (2016) and Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico (2013). Collections which own Rodríguez’s art include The Cleveland Museum of Art; Colby College Museum of Art, Waterville; MUSAC Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León, Spain; Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; SCAD Museum of Art, Savannah; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.

This exhibition is dedicated in loving memory of John T. Belk III