Yulier Rodriguez makes an effort to greet us at every corner of the city with one of his doodles. The obscure beings he paints occupy a space between parody, mockery, social critique and power mechanisms. They cover large sections of walls, populating every nook and cranny, intrusively taking over the urban landscape.
Wielding a machete like a Mambi Cuban independence fighter, he tears apart, cuts and divides pieces of wood found at street corners and dump sites and, using tattered strips of old clothing, puts together an animal, an international pop icon or any other type of object.
“As a gesture of solidarity with the Palestinian people, Cuban artist Luis Manuel Alcantara made a gift to this nation through that country’s embassy in Havana, consisting of a group of home-made weapons collected from different neighborhoods around Havana.”
As we draw nearer to the work realized by Humberto Mayol in this past decade, we can note his ability to capture timeless images that respond to the ongoing and systematic dialogue of the social imaginary of humans in their time.
Abstract painting possesses a strange way of calling attention to itself. Its enigmatic, ambiguous and overwhelming character compels viewers to establish varying sets of interpretations, ones that sometimes become intensely bitter. (9 photos)