Daniel Ruanova works with a variety of materials, often transforming canvases and found objects into unexpected forms. Despite his interest in drawing from popular culture, Ruanova is keenly aware of the formal concerns in painting and sculpture, and works to push the traditional boundaries of these media through his unconventional use of materials. Sometimes his sculptures take form of abstracted guns, at other times Ruanova builds his three dimensional works out of an assemblage of colorful plastic guns, tanks, and toy soldiers. He uses the fictitious worlds of children´s toys, videogames, and comic books to create an ironic take on the current realities of war and violence. Whether paying a tongue-in-cheek homage to the power and might of fictional American superheroes, or producing intensely layered paintings whose abstract compositions are built from hyper-graphic images of targets, explosions, gunshot holes, and camouflage, Ruanova presents a political commentary that is informed by the direct relationship of living at the border with the Unites States, but is global rather than local in its scope.
(text from Catalogue: Strange New World / Art and Deign from Tijuana, Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego)