With “great respect” for the classics and a way of painting that enhances textures and colors, the young cuban artist Joaquín Ávila opens his first personal exhibition at the Art Basel fair in Miami, with interpretations of great works by Rubens, Velázquez, Caravaggio, Da Vinci and Goya.
“After so much chaos that there is now, I wanted to return to the essence of the trade of acrylic on canvas,” said Ávila about his exhibition to the Spanish agency efe.
“The Path” (El Camino) uses, however, a contemporary and pop language at the same time, according to a statement from the David Rosen Galleries gallery, in the artistic district of Wynwood, in which Ávila exhibits starting this Wednesday 24 pieces, some large.
The exhibition also reflects the personal trajectory of the 32-year-old artist, who left his native Guantanamo behind to make the leap to New York, where he has lived for six years and has made an artistic mark on Time Square, according to efe.
“The Path” leaves your eye riveted on untitled frames with a strong visual reference to Peter Paul Rubens’ “The Kidnapping of the Daughters of Leucippus”; “Las Meninas”, by Velázquez, or the “Mona Lisa”, by Leonardo Da Vinci. Its author believes that despite the fact that “a great distance between classical and baroque art separates us, the same message has been maintained”.
“My painting is a return to the trade. I have always been attracted to the classics, I am a consumer of classical art, for this reason, beyond representing the beauty of the piece itself, I let spontaneity and vividness escape through time, with a more contemporary language”, he comments.
Ávila not only uses spatula and brushes, but “all kinds of instruments” that he believes may be valid and sometimes even paints with his own hands. Of course, he points out, each stroke is spontaneous so that his works represent his personality, and in each painting he spends between 5 and 15 pounds (2.26 and 6.8 kilos) of paint, he detailed . “The pieces are very physical, they have a texture and a realization that you have to see them in person.”
According to its promoters in Miami, “’The Path’ is a baroque, multicultural and cynical exhibition”, as is the journey that took Ávila from Cuba to New York.
“Being in Art Basel is a goal achieved, dreams come true,” says the Cuban about his exhibition at this art fair that will open its doors to the general public from December 1 to 3, and that annually brings together important artists and international galleries.
Art Basel transforms Miami Beach into the artistic center of America
“I was born in Cuba in the 90s, I have managed to get out of Guantanamo to Havana and then to New York. This project speaks of that link and how I have managed to achieve my first personal exhibition in Art Basel”, says Ávila.
In 2017, the New York gallery Foley Gallery, focused “on building the careers of lesser-known or less-recognized artists,” according to its website, hosted Ávila’s first personal exhibition, in which the Cuban showed his beehive project. “It’s a very nice project that I want to present next year at Art Basel in a retrospective exhibition,” he says.
Unlike the paintings in “The Path,” his beehives are three-dimensional sculptures made of silicone, wood, and plexiglass.
Also in 2017, Ávila showed part of his personal work in a collective exhibition at Art Basel in Miami, together with works by the renowned Spanish plastic artist Domingo Zapata, the singer-songwriter Alejandro Sanz and the actor Jordi Mollà.
Zapata, with whom he collaborated on the largest mural in history in Times Square, in New York, is his mentor and from him he learned “dedication to work and friendship.”
With more than 3,000 square meters, the canvas wraps three fifteen-story walls of the emblematic One Times Square, the building that welcomes the New Year with the mythical crystal ball.
“It was a very ambitious project, on an unimaginable scale. It was an experience like no other because of the danger we ran. Thank God everything went well”, recalls Ávila about that work that also recreates a menina, the iconic figure of Velázquez.
Efe/OnCuba.
