GIACOMO SANTIAGO ROGADO

Richeldis Fine Art presents EL CORAZÓN ES AGUA, a solo exhibition by Giacomo Santiago Rogado (b. 1979, Lucerne), a Swiss painter of Spanish-Italian origin whose work has, over more than two decades, developed a rigorous and expansive investigation into perception, pictorial space, and the conditions of seeing. Rogado has established a singular position within contemporary painting through a practice that moves fluidly between abstraction and figuration, extending the medium into spatial and immersive installation. At the core of Rogado’s practice is a process guided as much by material behaviour as by the artist’s hand. Working directly with the physical properties of paint, Rogado allows pigment to disperse, settle, and accumulate across raw canvas, creating compositions that emerge through a careful choreography of chance, rhythm, and restraint. The resulting forms hover between presence and dissolution - suggestive of atmosphere, landscape, shadow, or bodily trace, yet never fully fixed. His paintings unfold as perceptual fields, inviting a slow and shifting encounter in which image and abstraction continuously destabilise one another. Throughout the work there is a sense of continual movement - a fluid, almost tidal rhythm in which forms appear to drift, dissolve, and reform. This quality of flow reflects the artist’s process itself, where pigment, gravity, absorption, and time remain active participants in the formation of the image.

This new body of work marks a further distillation within the artist’s practice. More monochromatic and pared back in palette, the paintings reduce gesture and colour to their essential elements, pushing the abstraction towards an intensified sense of stillness and spatial ambiguity. Deep blacks, muted indigo tones, and saturated crimson emerge against luminous grounds, allowing the subtle movement of pigment and the tension between control and chance to become increasingly pronounced. The works possess a meditative clarity in which scale, silence, and material presence operate with quiet intensity. The exhibition also includes a monumental suspended painting positioned directly before the gallery window. Positioned in dialogue with the light behind it, the work reveals the translucency and internal structure of the painting itself. Hovering between image and object, surface and space, the work transforms the surrounding architecture into part of the composition. Here, Rogado extends painting beyond the wall and into an immersive spatial encounter in which light, atmosphere, and material presence become inseparable.

The exhibition includes four sculptural works from Rogado’s ongoing Observing Self and Time Capsule series. Composed of mirrored spheres and hourglass forms, the sculptures extend the artist’s investigation of perception, reflection, and consciousness into three dimensions. Their mirrored surfaces absorb the surrounding space while simultaneously implicating the viewer within the work itself, creating a tension between immersion and self-awareness. Echoing the conceptual sensibility of John Cage’s 4’33”, these works foreground attention and presence, heightening an awareness of space, duration, and the act of observation itself. Across Rogado’s practice, painting, sculpture, rhythm, and reflection operate as part of an evolving visual language - one that unfolds less as a fixed image than as a continuous state of movement, perception, and poetic resonance.

His work has been the subject of significant institutional exhibitions, most recently at Kunstmuseum Thun and Kunsthalle Göppingen, and has been presented in leading institutions including Kunstmuseum Solothurn, Helmhaus Zürich, Kunstmuseum Luzern, Kunsthaus Baselland, and Museo d’Arte della Svizzera Italiana. Rogado is the recipient of the Swiss Art Award, the Manor Art Prize, and the Recognition Prize of the City of Lucerne, affirming his position as one of the most compelling voices in contemporary Swiss painting.

Solo exhibtions

2026 - Richeldis Fine Art, Barcelona
2025 — senza fine, Galerie Mark Müller, Zürich
2025 — ALL THAT YOU SEE, Kunsthalle Göppingen
2024 — Ausser Sicht, Thun Panorama, Thun
2024 — ALL THAT YOU SEE, Kunstmuseum Thun
2023 — connecting, Galerie Mark Müller, Zürich,
2022 — Reality Blue, Bernhard Knaus Fine Art, Frankfurt
2021 — For the time left, Eins Gallery, Limassol, Cyprus
2021 —  constant change, Kunsthalle Luzern, Switzerland cur. Michael Sutter
2021 — Kopf Herz Bauch, Galerie Mark Müller, Zürich, Switzerland
2021 — Anfang von etwas, Städtische Galerie Delmenhorst, Germany (cat.) cur. Dr. Annett Reckert
2020 — Chameleon, Helvetia Art Foyer, Basel
2019/20 — Desire Path, Kunstmuseum Solothurn (cat.)
2019 — Depth of Field, Bernhard Knaus Fine Art, Frankfurt
2019 — Slow Change, Galería Kernel, Cáceres
2018 — Out of Nowhere, School of Observation, Berlin
2017 — Growing together through emotions over time, Galerie Mark Müller, Zürich
2016 — Coalescence, Acme Studios, London (cat.)
2015 — Observing Self, Galerie Mark Müller, Zürich
2015 — 299 792 458, with Gabriele Garavaglia, CAR drde, Bologna (cat.)
2015 — Intervention, Culture Church Erlenbach, Zürich
2015 — Center of mass, Bernhard Knaus Fine Art, Frankfurt (cat.) cur. by Luigi Kurmann
2014 — Albrecht Schnider/ Giacomo Santiago Rogado, Helmhaus, Zürich (cat.) cur. by Simon Maurer
2013 — Focal Point, Museum im Bellpark, Kriens (cat.) cur. by Hilar Stadler
2013 — The Confluence, Galerie Luis Campaña, Berlin
2012 — Devoted To The Moment, Galerie Mark Müller, Zürich (cat.)
2012 — Equations On Infinity, Solo Project, Artissima Torino (cat.)
2012 — Tangential Thoughts, Galerie Luis Campaña, Berlin
2011 — Sentinel, Solo Project, Justmad, Madrid (cat.)
2010 — Contiguity, Galeria Tatiana Kourochkina, Barcelona (cat.)
2010 — praesens et tangere, Galerie Mark Müller, Zürich (cat.)
2010 — I`ll wait. Solo Project Arco Madrid (cat.) cur. by Susanne Neubauer
2009 — first second patience, Kunstmuseum Luzern (cat.) cur. by Susanne Neubauer & Katja Lenz
2008 — Weiß & Prosa, o.T. Raum für aktuelle Kunst, Luzern (cat.)
2008 — Ewiges Abendland, Galerie Mark Müller, Zürich (cat.)
2006 — schlaf, Galerie Mark Müller, Zürich (cat.)

Group exhibtions

2025 — Fields Unbound, Bernhard Knaus Fine Art, Frankfurt
2024 — durch dick und dünn, Galerie Mark Müller, Zürich
2023 — Bilder mit und ohne Haare, Museum im Bellpark, Kriens
2023 — Concerto Finale, Regionale, Kunsthaus Baselland, Switzerland
2023 — Transformations, Museum Franz Gertsch, Burgdorf, Switzerland
2023 — Wintershow, CCA Andratx, Mallorca, Spain
2023 — Malerei, Galerie Mark Müller, Zürich, Switzerland
2022 — Ohne Titel / Untitled, Kunstmuseum Singen, Germany
2022 — (Un)Certain Ground, Centre d’Art Pasquart, Biel/Bienne
2022 — it is, it isn’t, Galerie Mark Müller, Zürich
2022 — Before Between Beyond, Aargauer Kunsthaus, Aarau
2021 — New Arrivals, Kunsthalle Göppingen, Germany
2021 — Miradas del norte, Galería Kernel, Cáceres, Spain
2021 —  Enjoy the silence, Helvetia Art Foyer, Basel, Switzerland
2020 — Perspectives, La collection d’Art Helvetia, Musée d’art de Pully
2020 — Zentral, Kunstmuseum Luzern
2020 — Enjoy the Silence, Helvetia Art Foyer, Basel
2020 — XXX die 2., Galerie Mark Müller, Zürich
2019 — 75 Jahre Freunde der Aargauischen Kunstsammlung, Aargauer Kunsthaus, Aarau
2019 — Werke aus der Sammlung Hürlimann Thalmann, Galerie Luciano Fasciati, Chur
2019 — Single, but happy, Galerie Mark Müller Zürich
2019 — Ding / Unding. Die Entgrenzung des Künstler*innenbuchs, Graphische Sammlung ETH,ZH
2019 — Abstraktion | Abbild, VFO, Verein für Originalgraphik, Zürich
2018 — Savoir-faire & laisser-faire, Galerie Mark Müller
Zürich, cur. by Frédéric Dedelley
2018 — Jahresausstellung, Kunstmuseum Luzern
2017— Neither Innocent Nor Guilty, Daily Lazy Projects, Athens, cur. by Giorgos Kontis
2016 — Flower To Arts, Aargauer Kunsthaus, Aarau
2016 — Tango Them Basel, Galerie Mark Müller, Zürich
2016 — 25 Jahre Sammlung Bellpark, Museum im Bellpark, Kriens
2015 — La Confusion des Genres, Galerie Mark Müller, Zürich, cur. by Frédéric Dedelley
2014 — Docking Station, Aargauer Kunsthaus, Aarau, cur. by Madeleine Schuppli, Thomas Schmutz, Yasmin Afschar
2014 — The Artist As Producer, Produzentengalerie Alpineum, Luzern, cur. by Bas Van den Hurk
2014 — Markshmallow, Galerie Mark Müller, Zürich
2014 — We Fragment, Collect And Narrate, Kunstmuseum Thun, cur. by Sayoko Nakahara
2013 — Green Flower Street, Galata, Istanbul (cat.) cur. by Ariel Roger-Paris
2013 — Das doppelte Bild, Kunstmuseum Solothurn, Solothurn (cat.) cur. by Andreas Fiedler & Christoph Vögele
2012 — Holzwege. Sentieri erranti., Museo Cantonale d`Arte, Lugano (cat.)
2012 — Behind The Portrait, Galeria Tatiana Kourochkina, Barcelona
2012 — For Example Painting, Galerie Mark Müller, Zürich
2012 — Virtual Insanity, Fiedler Taubert Contemporary, Berlin
2012 — Streiflichter, Kornschütte, Luzern
2011 — Between Visual and Non Objective Abstraction, Projektraum Sophienstrasse, Berlin, cur. by Dina Renninger & Rupert Pfab
2011 — Selection Cuvée, Kunstpavillon, Luzern
2011 — Colours.Culeurs. Colori., Die Mobiliar, Bern
2011 — Gessnerallee 36, Galerie Mark Müller, Zürich
2010 — Ambigu, Kunstmuseum St. Gallen (cat.), cur. by Konrad Bitterli
2009 — first choice, Galerie Mark Müller, Zürich
2008 — Welt in Sicht, Kunsthalle, Luzern, cur. by Annamira Jochim & Barbara von Flüe
2007 — Étant donné! Die Sammlung, Aargauer Kunsthaus, Aarau (cat.) cur. by Beat Wismer
2007 — Werkbeiträge des Kantons Luzern, Kunstpanorama, Luzern
2007 — Swiss Art Awards, Messe, Basel (cat.)
2007 — Accrochage, Galerie Mark Müller, Zürich
2006 — memory lines and washing lines, Galerie Mark Müller, Zürich, cur. by Katharina Grosse & Christine Streuli
2006 — Swiss Art Awards, Messe, Basel
2006 — Mulhouse 006 Contemporary Art, Mulhouse (cat.)
2005 — Absolut Raspberrri, Kunstraum Walcheturm, Zürich
2005 — bildlich, OP-Nord, Stuttgart
2005 — Present Perfect, Erfrischungsraum, Luzern (cat.)
2005 — National Kunstpreis, Kunsthaus Baselland, Baselland
2004 — Platzverweis, Erfrischungsraum, Luzern

Monographs

2024/25 — ALL THAT YOU SEE, texts by Melanie Ardjah, Helen Hirsch, Luca Libertini, design by Amanda Haas, pub. by DISTANZ Berlin
2021 — Anfang von etwas, text by Dr. Annett Reckert, design by Amanda Haas, pub. by Städtische Galerie Delmenhorst
2020 — Insight, texts by Gabriela Acha, Yasmin Afschar, Seigaku Higuchi, Simon Maurer, Chris Sharp, 200 pp., design by Amanda Haas, pub. by School of Observation, Berlin
2019 — Desire Path, texts by Miguel F. Campón, Christoph Vögele, 140 pp., design by Amanda Haas, pub. by Verlag für Moderne Kunst
2013 — In-Between Things, texts by Christy Wampole, english/german, 320 pp., 24,5 x 18,5cm, design by Amanda Haas, pub. by Studio Rogado, Berlin
2012 — Devoted To The Moment, text by Yasmin Afschar, english/german, 26 pp., 20,8 x 14,9cm, design by Amanda Haas, pub. by Galerie Mark Müller, Zürich
2010 — contiguity – Giacomo Santiago Rogado, text by Ulrich Loock, english/spanish/german, 72 pp., 30,8 x 20,5cm, design by C2F, pub. by Revolver Publishing
2009 — first second patience – Giacomo Santiago Rogado, texts by Konrad Bitterli, Ursula Pia Jauch, Magdalena Kröner, Katja Lenz, english/german, 13,4 pp., 295 x 21,8cm, design by C2F, pub. by Kerber Edition Young Art

Artist Books

2016 — Coalescence, texts by Antonio Grulli, designed by Amanda Haas, pub. by Studio Rogado
2015 — 299 792 458, with Gabriele Garavaglia, designed by Lina Ozerkina, pub. by Friends Make Books, Torino
2010 — praesens et tangere, 21 x 15cm, 36 pp., pub. by Studio Rogado
2008 — Weiß & Prosa, 24 x 18cm, 22 pp., pub. by Studio Rogado
2007 — Ewiges Abendland, 26 x 20cm, 64 pp., texts by Angelika Ritter & Yasmin Afschar, pub. by Studio Rogado
2006 — Schlaf, 27 x 19cm, 90 pp., text by Marina Leuenberger, pub. by Studio Rogado
2006 — Weiße Seiten, 15 x 11cm, 44 pp., text by Giacomo Santiago Rogado, pub. by Studio Rogado
2005 — Bild, Parlament für Farbe und Dirigent, 27 x 20cm, 92 pp., pub. by Studio Rogado
2004 — Das Eine ohne das Andere. Von der Destruktion einer Wahrnehmung, 24 x 18cm, 96 pp., text by Giacomo Santiago Rogado, pub. by Studio Rogado

Collective Catalogues

2019 — Giacomo Santiago Rogado—Künstler/Kritisches Lexikon der Gegenwartskunst
2013 — Das doppelte Bild, Aspekte zeitgenössischer Malerei, texts by Patricia Bieder, Andreas Fiedler, Daniel Morgenthaler, Viola Vahrson, Christoph Vögele, Isabel Zürcher, Walter Zuberbühler, ed. by Kunstmuseum Solothurn, pub. by Richter|Fey
2011 — Du Magazin, Sonderedition, Julius Baer Art Collection, text by Giacomo Santiago Rogado
2010 — Ambigu, Contemporary Painting between Abstraction and Narration, texts by Konrad Bitterli, Stefanie Kasper, Nadia Veronese, Roland Wäspe, ed. by Konrad Bitterli, pub. by Kunstmuseum St. Gallen
2009 — Helvetia Kunstsammlung, text by Roland Wäspe, edited by Annette Ruppli, pub. by Helvetia Versicherungen
2007 — Ein Kunst Haus, texts by Max Wechsler, Michael Hanak, Lilian Pfaff, Gerhard Mack, Stephan Kunz, ed. by Beat Wismer, Stephan Kunz, Gerhard Mack, pub. by Aargauer Kunsthaus, Aarau
2007 — Sal. Oppenheim 10 Years Collection, pub. by Sal. Oppenheim jr. & Cie.
2007 — Swiss Art Awards 2007, edited by Bundesamt für Kultur, pub. by Schweizerischer Kunstverein Zürich

Awards

2022 — CCA Andratx Residency
2020 — Most Beautiful German Books
2016 — Work Grant Prize, Canton of Lucerne
2016 — Landis & Gyr Residency, London
2014 — Work Grant Prize, Canton of Lucerne
2013 — Recognition Award, City of Lucerne
2009 — Manor Art Prize Central Switzerland
2007 — Swiss Art Award

Collections

Aargauer Kunsthaus Aarau
Kunstmuseum St. Gallen
Museum im Bellpark Kriens
Kunstmuseum Thun
Kunstmuseum Solothurn
Kunsthalle Göppingen
Städtische Galerie Delmenhorst
CCA Andratx, Mallorca
SwissRe Collection
Hoffmann La Roche Collection
Perić Collection
Servais Family Collection
Helvetia Art Collection
Julius Bär Art Collection
UBS Art Collection
Credit Suisse Art Collection
Mobiliar Kunstsammlung
Kunstsammlung der Schweizerischen Nationalbank
Sammlung Zürcher Kantonalbank
Kunstsammlung des Kantons Luzern
Kunstsammlung der Schweizerischen Post
Stadt Luzern Kunstsammlung
Kunstsammlung Manor AG
Grafische Sammlung der Schweizerischen Nationalbibliothek
Kunstsammlung Kanton Zürich