MAREO

Mario Rodríguez Echeverry (Mexico City, 1981), known as Mareo, is a multidisciplinary artist raised in Colombia and based in Barcelona, whose work encompasses painting, sculpture, digital media, and large-scale installations that explore the relationship between nature, light, and spiritual transformation. An architect from the Pontifical Bolivarian University of Medellín, with master's degrees in Design from Elisava and in Arts from the UNA in Buenos Aires, he has developed a solid international career with 16 solo exhibitions and participation in projects and festivals in America, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. His work has been shown at events such as the Sharjah Islamic Arts Festival, the NFT Illumia project in Miami, the Istanbul Triennial, and the Times Art Museum in Beijing, and is part of collections in institutions in countries such as Italy, the US, Dubai, Canada, Malta, and Saudi Arabia. In 2024, he presented a monumental light installation in Hungary and a solo exhibition at LOAD Digital Art Gallery, and in 2025 he was awarded the ROOM Design Prize in the Art category by Matadero Madrid.

“Monolito” was created as an extension of artist Mareo Rodriguez's Portales series and his exploration of the crack as a central symbol in his work, which is a tribute to the forces of nature that have shaped the landscape.

In this piece, the fracture becomes the axis of the visual language: a vertical crack runs through a stone monolith and reveals light from within. This form, present in nature in mountains, rocks, canyons, rivers, and lightning, manifests itself as a gesture of vulnerability, but also of openness and transformation. It is a wound that lets light through, a fissure that connects dimensions, a threshold to the invisible.

Monolith is not just a structure, but a symbol of resilience, the act of fracturing to let in the light of consciousness and begin the path of transformation.

"Monolito"
2025