Pieces by Vicente Hernandez, a worthy exponent of the real-marvelous in contemporary painting in Cuba, aim at interpreting symbols and legends of the Cuban and universal culture.
Vicente, known as the painter from Batabano, not just for being born there, but for turning this place into a neuralgic and emotive spot in his aesthetic proposal, is exhibiting his work around these days at the Villa Manuela Gallery.
Under the title Por si fuera la huella… about ten medium and large pieces surround spectators in a mystic aura of the storms he places us in. There we find zeppelin towns full of houses, a surrealist vision that moves in different directions from the absurd to the sublime. Each piece tells a story of its own, with a beginning and end, and as much interpretations as spectators may find depending on their subjectivity and their experiences.
I cannot tell if it is about lifejackets or Noah’s arks, his creations are based in and out of Cuba because he has taken part in different personal and collective exhibits and in prestigious auctions by Sotheby´s, Christie´s and Phillips in New York.
The universe he creates and recreates is characterized by its quality and technique. He strives to rescue fragments of collective memory as antidote for nostalgia through resurrected ships, properties and devices. His dirigibles, boats and aerostatic globes float in ocher, grey and blue environments, bringing together elements of what is, used to be, and could have been in an eternal journey between illusion and reality.
Vicente’s work left the galleries and moved to the TV in the recently concluded Cuban soap opera Playa Leonora. It entered a thousand homes and spectators were able to decipher it and come closer to the work by this restless artist, who majored on Artistic Education from the Enrique Jose Varona Higher Institute, which he now teaches in that same school.
OnCuba interviewed him about his artistic work and this exhibit:
Many people would say your work is surrealistic, how would you describe it?
My work has a social and even a political commitment; both are part of our life. That’s why my speech includes a touch of irony, humor, it laughs about things that would make anyone cry or that would seem unbelievable in other nations, but for people in the Caribbean are usual. The technique is mixed, oil painting, acrylic. For non-experts I sometimes say I´m surrealist, it is more comfortable because many people are familiar with the parameters of surrealism. However, the real-marvelous or magical realism is what I do.
You have a lot of philosopher, symbolic and nostalgic…
In my work, also my history, expressions turn out of time into a present fact and legends into life, that’s the real-marvelous. Inhabitants, with huge desires for taking a journey without a final destination trying to escape from everything, resemble an ancestral heritage: a journey to the unknown with the hope of finding the lost paradise. In this heroic deed against oblivion and misfortune, worn out wood houses, the hotel, the church, etc. would plot in favor of adventure and unusual journeys star universal events that are made visible form their solitude. The town and its people is taken over navigable skies, in suspended and mobileislands, or other flying objects, in a disconcerting trip carrying an origin and an identity that is always present no matter where they go to.
What’s your proposal with Por si fuera la huella…?
Emptiness is not guilty of anything; guilty is who sustains it… From that perspective I’m not surprised nor moved by disaster or its punishing imprint. As a child I lived in a defenseless town from the southern sea, insensible host of hurricanes that hit us and destroy years of efforts and dreamsin a few hours. My objective is not to complain, but to rebuild everything that’s left to go back to life. I’m uncomfortable about the feeling I never invented. What if this was an Imprint somebody left me?: The rebellious act of making miracles from disasters. And I invent things that though may have not been built yet at least we are projecting it already in a piece, a painting, just probably that.
I think some of that universally known and unimagined fits in my little world, perhaps a world of a vain villager with no other option but to start over again. If you lost it, then start over. If your hands fell because someone wants it, dare yourself and start over again. Creating large walking or flying mills is the right to reinvent them and decide till when we want to continue being shaken by the hurricane. Por si Fuera la Huella is an invitation to run or face life.
Anyway it is nothing but fair to have options. Although by the deep call of a mystery, I waited in stoicism to fill the emptiness by those who also left.
