“Escala humana” [Human Scale] options the work Cuban sculptor Yoan Capote (Pinar del Río, Cuba, 1977) and of Italian multimedia artist Michelangelo Pistoletto (Biella, Italy, 1933) as they hint the legacy of Arte Povera and discover “the politics of materiality.” The exhibition is on view at Galleria Continua (Havana) till April 23, 2023. [Galleria Continua-Águila de Oro is located at Rayo 108 (between Zanja and Dragones), Barrio Chino, Havana, Cuba.]
Description: After the numerous efficiency with the fishermen’s boats within the Cuban sea, the good exhibition hosted in 2016 by the Nationwide Museum of Effective Arts, and different undertakings throughout the Cuban socio-cultural and inventive context, particularly by way of the energetic venue of Tercer Paraíso, Pistoletto, who professes a deep and particular affection for Cuba, returns. He does so to reframe some recurring themes or points in his work, however this time stimulating a generational dialogue with Yoan Capote, one of the crucial essential Cuban artists of the present artwork scene.
ESCALA HUMANA (Human Scale) brings collectively these two artists whose respective practices contain artwork, actuality and the person in a really specific approach. These items present a really clear curiosity in redefining the viewer’s aesthetic expertise by way of a specific expressive energy of the featured supplies and objects. Any materials remodeled by their minds and human heat invariably turns into poetry, power or that means, whether or not by way of the subtlety of a easy gesture or a meticulous elaboration. Within the case of Michelangelo Pistoletto, one of many best figures of Arte Povera, iconic items from completely different moments of his profession are introduced, amongst them Caribbean Sea, Love Distinction, Across the World and a sequence of works made with mirrors. A few of these date again to 1976 and are an express assertion of the conceptual nature of his inventive work. Additionally included within the exhibition is one among his best-known works, Venus of the Rags, created in 1967 and thought of emblematic of Arte Povera. The juxtaposition of rags and the statue of Venus produces a dialectic correlation just like the one characterizing his “Quadri specchianti” (Mirror Work). A set determine with its again turned –the statue representing an timeless ultimate of magnificence handed on by way of the centuries– interacts with a myriad of doubtless limitless and ever-changing objects –the rags, symbolizing waste and degradation, but in addition consumerism, recycling, and social marginalization–.
Likewise, a NeoPovera sensibility could be appreciated in a lot of Yoan Capote’s work, conditioned firstly of his profession by the context and its difficulties concerning entry to state-of-the-art technical options, however on the similar time by his curiosity in all the time discovering essentially the most expressive aspect of supplies, whether or not humble or industrial. Nonetheless, there’s a distinctive function in the way in which Capote tries to show the bodily expertise of those supplies right into a symbolic or emotional set off. That’s to say, there may be in his works a visceral method of analyzing weight, corrosion, fragility, stability, tactile expertise, but in addition of synthesizing the way in which by which the viewer interacts with them.
Coming into the exhibition, the primary works we discover in dialogue are This Area Does Not Exist (1967), one among Pistoletto’s mirror work the place, by together with the viewer and the current time within the piece, he modifies and introduces a brand new notion of perspective, alongside Capote’s Household Portrait (2022). The latter alludes to the lyrics of one of the crucial emblematic songs of the Cuban artist’s era, Foto de familia (Household Image) by Carlos Varela, but it surely has been conceived particularly for this exhibition and impressed by means of the mirror within the work of the Italian grasp. Capote makes use of outdated home mirrors as a reference and the traditional household pictures which might be displayed in our intimate areas. With archaeological delicacy, he provides the quicksilver on the again, scraping and stripping it to disclose the transparency of the glass whereas engraving the picture of the ocean. Proper on the horizon he has minimize the glass and the world of the sky he inverts in opposition to the wall. The colour of the quicksilver reminds us of the grey of the sky and on the similar time speaks of those that are now not with us. Different dialogues are articulated all through the exhibition: the texts of “Arrival” and “Departure” that current Pistoletto’s thought of Across the World, Caribbean Sea occupying the middle of the exhibition corridor, and serving as a mediator between cultures, languages, political and non secular visions, surrounded by the seas of Yoan Capote’s Islands sequence, and his sculptures Self-Portrait (a research of resistance) and On our Shoulders. The latter evoke a direct allusion to the emotional weight and non secular burden of our physique. Each are works that dilute the illustration of particular person expertise in a collective empathy, or social allusion. The previous exhibits a meticulous research of stability; its visible fragility conveys a static stress within the face of gravity and an evocation of the vulnerability of our life and our physique. Equally, following the custom of the classical bust, the second work exhibits us a visible analogy between the shoulders of a sculpture and the inverted form of the heavy anvil. It’s virtually the ready-made high quality of this object, whose weight and metal tenacity inform the story of numerous blows obtained and its internal power.
Love Distinction, a phrase that stands out in pink neon on the second ground of the gallery as an pressing name, is one among Pistoletto’s works that outline the discourse of this exhibition and its title, accentuated by works resembling Capote’s Abstinence (tolerance). For these artists, artwork not solely goes past the sector of aesthetics and enters the sector of ethics and concepts, but in addition assumes actual and concrete duties in all areas of human life. Artwork turns into a essential driving drive for interplay and dialogue.
For full description and details about the artists, see https://www.galleriacontinua.com/exhibitions/escala-humana-385/press-release
[Photo above by Néstor Kim.]