PAST GALLERY EVENTS

Havana Sci-Fi

Curated by Adolfo V. Nodal

January 15 - February 19 2005

Opening Reception:
Friday January 14
6 - 8pm

The Bronx River Art Center (BRAC) is pleased to present "Havana Sci-Fi", curated by Adolfo V. Nodal, a survey of eight young artists pursuing professional careers in Havana, Cuba today. This exhibition presents painting, sculpture and installation pieces representing the current vanguard of thought and preoccupations that are strongly reflected in their frank and unvarnished artistic output.

These artists, who represent a variety of points of view and backgrounds, are the new breed cutting their teeth in the international milieu and bohemian cultural atmosphere that is found in the City of Havana today. Hailed from various parts of Cuba and as well as from other countries. They are a mirror of the so called "Generation 2000" of emerging artists that are part of Havana's exciting art scene. The group of young artists in this show are the new cutting-edge of Cuban Art, still largely under the radar in Cuba and almost unknown in the USA.

Through these eight artists, we can see a panorama of artistic tendencies that are closely connected with the place that is Cuba-specifically Havana-and in strong relationship with intellectual life throughout the world. Although Cuba is embargoed by the US, these artists are remarkably worldly and part of the trends and ideas that are global and of our times.

This exhibition of individual art works, which also functions as a total installation, offers a gritty vision of art that is preoccupied with scientific process, ancient ritual, cycles, endless repetition, constant change and existential cause and effect relationships. This is raw work that is screened through an esthetic-scientific eye and biological, religious, and ecological concerns. They also offer a preoccupation with human representation, sexuality and censure. Havana Sci-Fi reveals a surreal perception that filters the viewpoint of these young artists and belies the effects of rapid social evolution and changing values in Cuba at the dawn of the 21st Century.

Currently the Havana Art Scene, fueled by four decades of enduring cultural development strategies by the Castro Government, has witnessed a solid ten years of international promotion due to increased tourism. Although relations between the US and Cuba remain severely strained, which has hurt cultural development on the Island, Havana is, culturally as vital as ever, with many active cultural venues and a full schedule of activities, events and critical discourse. Havana is one of the most thriving bohemian cultural centers in the Americas. This selection of Cuban visual artists, like Cuban music, continues to re-generate itself with new emerging talent, mixed with artists and ideas from the outside world. Those that would think Cuba is isolated intellectually are mistaken. Cuba is a place that generates new culture and fresh ideas just as regularly as the warm tropical waves lap against Havana's humongous seawall-- the "Malecon". There are eight of those warm waves of talent.

Los Animistas is a collaborative team consisting of a visual artist working with a media producer, a biologist, and a taxidermist that creates studies, installations, photography and other presentations that reflect existential, ethical and ecological issues while using native Cuban wild life (like vultures, bats, scorpions and crocodiles) as the work's primary metaphor. The work is a stark jolt to our conscience regarding the natural cycles of life, our ethics in society and our relationship to animals and natural processes presented through a scientific, bio-esthetic point of view.

Fidel Ernesto investigates reality itself and holds it out as a poetic metaphor of beauty. He produces direct interventions that almost always require the complicity of the viewer. Here he uses a techno-mechanical process to quantify the dust form grinding an already crumbling rampart and to amplify otherwise-undecipherable texts hidden in the gallery walls or his own writings that blend into the space. His is a vision that sees what is there already whether it is the patina of an ancient surface or the sunlight tracking on the floor.

Omar & Carlos Estrada, two brothers that form an art squad who share a special interest in science in a Neo-Renaissance tradition. Their installations of pseudo space suits, sound installations and quasi-scientific objects show a sense of experimentation, invention and exploration. Their work employs elements of motion and surprise and otherwise responds in a variety of ways to the viewer. They have also been involved with medical aesthetics and its similarity to the cultural phenomena. They recognize the beauty of medical representation in and of itself.

Jose Emilio Fuentes works with memories of his childhood that reflects elements of his more early history in his wall installation. In this extremely sad and powerful work, the side of childhood diseases, violence, rudeness and despair weave together with the naive thoughts of children's drawings about sex, death and other tragedies.

Alain Pino uses photography like an engineer develops structures. Each idea builds a work of art that exists as an amalgam of structural details sometimes focusing on the commercial manipulation of human beings by media and multi national corporate interests. Other photo pieces address the issues of migration especially the tragedy of the Cuban Rafters and their often unsuccessful attempts to reach American soil, ending up in the bottom of the Florida Straights. This is one of Cuban Society's most catastrophic and enigmatic problems. Pino addresses it with a time-motion photo installation that harkens back to Eadweard Muybridge's scientific movement studies of men and animals in the last century. In Pino's Cuban Subjects, the moment of human drowning.

Ernesto Pina has created the fictional character of an adolescent girl who is in a period of growth in which teenagers discover their bodies but still think like children. Mr. Pina offers the viewer a choice between a stern paternal approach to this over-endowed flirty girl or a game of forbidden seductions. These psycho erotic haikus follow a narrative thread that gives the girl's character emotional definition and provides a pseudo-clinical artist's account of what should, more appropriately, be a serious psychological study by a medical doctor.

Harold Vasquez works within the limits of the medium-whatever that medium happens to be. In this exhibition, the artist offers videos and ruminations on time, how it is measured and how it impacts the viewer. He accomplishes this beautifully by filming a girl as a vividly still image that stops the clock when she looses her pose. This piece is as much about time as it is about exploring new boundaries of traditional portraiture.

Adolfo V Nodal, Curator, is an established producer and promoter of arts and culture in the United States with special emphasis on Cuban culture. He has held leadership positions in arts institutions throughout the US and has promoted Cuban Artists of all disciplines over the last 20 years. From 1989 to 2004 he was General Manager of the City of LA's Cultural Affairs Department. He is currently in private practice in the area of Cultural Development. Mr. Nodal co-authored and produced the book MEMORIA: Cuban Art of the 20th Century in 2003. He resides in Los Angeles, California.

This program is made possible with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency. Additional support is provided by the New York City Department of Youth and Community Development, Bronx Council on the Arts/Cultural Venture Fund, the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs (and it's Material for the Arts program), Bronx Borough President Adolfo Carrion, the Bronx Delegation of the New York City Council, and US Congressman Jose E. Serrano's WCS-NOAA Lower Bronx River Partnership. BRAC is also a member of The New York State Multi-Arts Centers consortium which receives funds from NYSCA and The J.P. Morgan Chase Foundation. Foundation support is provided by New York Community Trust, The Carnegie Corporation of New York, The Center for Arts Education with funds from the Annenberg Foundation, and The Helena Rubinstein Foundation. This program is also made possible with funds from the Ford Foundation through the Bronx Council on the Arts.