Tag: cuba

Yoan Capote at Jack Shainman Gallery

Evoking light from heaven as well as the rising sun, Cuban artist Yoan Capote’s use of gold in a show of new seascapes at Jack Shainman Gallery’s Chelsea locations offers immediate uplift. After a 2019 visit to Italy, where Capote had access to abundant medieval and early Renaissance art, the artist adopted gold backgrounds and the circular format of this painting to create images that are optimistic yet also anxious.  Connecting the migrant crisis in the Mediterranean with many Cubans’ struggle to cross the Caribbean, Capote embeds fishing hooks in recent work, picturing the sea as a barrier.  (On view through Aug 5th).

Yoan Capote, Requiem (vault), 24kt gold leaf, nails and fishhooks on panel of linen mounted over plywood, 53 (diameter) x 5 (depth) inches, 2021.

Stuart Davis in Havana at Kasmin Gallery

While recovering from the Spanish flu in 1920, iconic American modernist painter Stuart Davis made a short trip to Cuba, recording its people and places in a series of alluring watercolors now on view at Chelsea’s Kasmin Gallery.  Often pictured in silhouette, Davis’ figures appear to be glimpsed in passing.  Suffused with light-infused, warm tones, the paintings evidence the intrigue of an unfamiliar environment.  (On view through Aug 13th.)

Stuart Davis, La Casa Rosa, watercolor on paper, 24 7/8 x 19 inches, 1920.

Enrique Martinez Celaya at Jack Shainman Gallery

A rosebush and clusters of rebar suggest beauty and a nascent building project in Cuban-born artist Enrique Martinez Celaya’s ‘The Brave.’ The text at top reads, ‘…a dream that can keep us asleep all night,’ compounding the surreal quality of this simultaneously barren and lush scenario. (At Jack Shainman Gallery in Chelsea through April 22nd.)

Enrique Martinez Celaya, The Brave, oil and wax on canvas, 60 x 72 inches, 2016.

Yoan Capote at Jack Shainman Gallery

Green Caribbean waters turn menacing under steely grey skies, their currents outlined in rows of fishhooks in this meditation on isolation by Cuban artist Yoan Capote. (At Jack Shainman Gallery’s 24th Street location in Chelsea through March 11th).

Yoan Capote, detail of Isla (Tierra Prometida), oil, nails, and fish hooks on linen mounted on panel, 75 3/16 x 115 3/8 x 5 1/8 inches, 2016.

Roberto Diago at Magnan Metz

Celebrated Cuban artist Roberto Diago presents wall-mounted works in corrugated sheet metal that look like weather-beaten modernist abstractions with a distinctly Cuban twist revealed in the title, ‘Variaciones de Oggun,’ a nod to the Latin American deity Oggun, who is associated with metal work. (At Magnan Metz in Chelsea through April 9th).

Roberto Diago, installation view of work from the series, ‘Variaciones de Oggun,’ (Variations of Ogun), 2010, March 2016 at Magnan Metz Gallery.
Roberto Diago, installation view of work from the series, ‘Variaciones de Oggun,’ (Variations of Ogun), 2010, March 2016 at Magnan Metz Gallery.