This exhibition was part of Patrick McNabb’s August 2024 residency at haul in conjunction with his upcoming exhibition opening in September.

In Dying Garden Dream, Rod Cuellar stages an otherworldly landscape transforming mundane materials into symbols that harken to impactful events in his life, including the recent loss of his mother. His long interests in physical and psychological interior spaces have inspired a multiple approach rumination on the experiences of profound loss, the pursuit of beauty and desire.

Entering into Cuellar’s Dream, the gallery walls are draped with painter’s drop cloths patterned with tablet shaped ovals containing black silhouettes of male figures from late 80’s gay porn magazines. Rod came of age just as the AIDS crisis was exploding. Along the base of the drop cloth runs a sort of hedge composed of hand made black crepe paper hydrangea flowers. The flowers are an homage to the many colorful flowers he made for his parent’s 50th wedding anniversary and to his mom’s memory of the many crafts they created together.

Among the black hydrangea sit a series of simple grave monuments that are not marked with names and dates, but with small bare lightbulbs. The bulbs also appear on a large single black moon-like shape hanging in space. The notion of a moon and stars has long transfixed the artist's imagination having been born in Houston during the golden age of NASA’s missions to the moon. The bulbs here illuminate the present, but also trigger memories of the past with their warm welcoming glow. A glow reminiscent of candles used to celebrate holidays and birthdays and the fairy lights used to adorn quiet corners and shelves throughout the home his mother created.

The incomparable opera diva Jessye Norman’s recordings of Strauss’ Four Last Songs provide the aural environment and poetic motif considering Cuellar’s themes.

Rod Cuellar is a multidisciplinary artist living in Brooklyn, NY. He’s a graduate of Rice University and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He’s shown work as an artist and theatre designer in New York, Houston, Washington D.C, Detroit, Seattle, Madison and Salt Lake City.