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| Photo-topography, Carlos Garaicoa. Galleria Continua at the Armory Show 2012. |
It looked like styrofoam in person, but apparently artist Caralos Garaicoa transferred photographs to polyspan (I suspect a material a lot like styrofoam) to create these white images.
Garaicoa is a Cuban artist who tends to explore Cuba’s identity and politics through its buildings. These archetectural scenes were clearly composed, but the precision of them crumbles away as you look closer.
La cosa está mala 2008
Contemporary art in Cuba seems on one hand to be flourishing, with studios all over Havana asking you to come in and have a look at some brightly-colored, expressive 
paintings– all done rather skillfully. They start to look the same after a while. However, Carlos Quintana had a show up (in a proper gallery, no less) that really impressed me.
Quintana was born in Havana in 1966 and went to art school there. I found that he moved to Madrid, where he currently resides, in 1993. The large canvases with bright washes and splatters of color that he uses belie the darker undercurrent of his figures. In the work below, he slaps on paint in a manner more violent than cartoonish, and the size of the canvas (79 x 79 in.) can overwhelm. Yet the Senorita’s innocent expression and sea foam green dress add a wistfulness to the composition.
And I’m not only talking about the state-subsidized ice cream parlor in Havana, where Cubans wait in line for hours for the flavor of the day–at times with empty plastic containers in tow.*
This is where they hide all they good stuff: the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes’ Coleccion de Arte Cubano. The museum proceeds chronologically from the pre-Colonial to contemporary post-Revolution Cuban art. Here they have a horde of works by the under-appreciated Fidelio Ponce de Leon and some of Wilfredo Lam‘s most famous paintings, including La Silla, as well as extensive drawings of his. After reading up on these painters a few months ago, it was a joy to see them.
Fidelio Ponce de Leon is an artist who is difficult to research, and there I was in the museum without even a pen to jot down the titles of his works! Unfortunately the museum is extensively staffed with gaurds who shout their Draconian policy of “No Foto,” even when you are photographing the caption next to the painting. It is a shame because there were many interesting artists who were new to me. To top it off, now that I have returned to the land of the internet, I find that the museum does not have a website. I guess I’ll have to wait a little longer on that one.
Another place that holds some good stuff, if you’ll allow me to toot my own horn, is Escape Into Life online arts journal, which posted an essay of mine last night. You might remember that I wrote a bit about Gauguin before on this blog, about the time I was writing about Ponce de Leon and Lam. If you want to continue the stroll down Memory Lane, check out Paul Gauguin and Savageness on Escape Into Life.
*You can buy roughly 50 scoops for the equivalent of 1 USD!, so it makes sense to fill up while you can.
