The 2004 National Plastic Arts Award Roberto Fabelo presents his exhibition of year’s end in the Havana Gallery. Under the title “No somos animales” the exhibition was inaugurated with the attendance of outstanding personalities of the plastic arts such as: Flora Fong, Ever Fonseca and the caricaturist René de la Nuez, among others.
The renowned painter, drawer and Cuban illustrator studied in the San Alejandro Academy of Plastic Arts and in the Higher Institute of Art of Havana. In “No somos animales” the artist confirms once again his talent for the drawing. In this occasion, he does it from a style in the compositions that show his affiliation towards the great masters of the Renaissance. The drawings were made both kraft – a distinctive sign of his work or on pages of books of science that explain the functioning of the human organs.
The sample makes us recall the extensive sketches of Leonardo da Vinci on the human anatomy. Fabelo tests and fragments the body, provides it with pens, horns, creating a resemblance with the animal forms. Hence the title is loaded with a completely ironic sense.
No somos animals really he comes to affirm that yes, we are. On having fused both anatomical structures and having incorporated the text, the artist drives to the recipient to discover typical characteristics of the man. Every work, like the case of Destino de los carneros constitutes a reflection about the positions people adopt as different subjects in the society, and it has a critique within.
Destino de los carneros presents a dish with a meat and flies. It is an allusion to the sacrifice as last end of the persons who live to flatter others for their own interests.
From the supposed innocence of the pieces social behaviors are reflected, strategies of manipulation in which the human values get lost: are we perhaps so different from the animals? the artist seems to wonder. Thinking, it is a call that the exhibition does in which the word serves him as weapons to propitiate a social reflection.
Simultaneously, a high dose of Cuban idiosyncrasy is stated in these pictures that cause the immediate laugh. The humor also is important, why not. A work of art also can be a motive of pleasure, of use for the recipient. It is the case of Sapingo in which the artist establishes an analogy between the figure with very dumb features and the meaning of the word as it is used in the popular language. Also it happens in the specimen that sleeps as a pig, they are habits and sayings with popular roots.
In this exhibition there is an attitude towards the present. It is a gesture that we really started missing in our arts and I am not talking about the supposed love-hate relation that generates so much polemics. It is a critical attitude, not sterile shelter under the futile sign of the irreverence.
It is already on having propitiated the provocation towards more serious questions of the life – the built projection of the subject in the society – or his simplest customs as having a short rest in an armchair; fabelo has the aptitude to present it with grace and elegance. Eight years ago – concerning being decorated with the distinction of National Award of Plastic Arts – it expressed that his best self-portrait was his work and that it was unfinished. I think that the painter without allow to seduce by the history of Narcissus Already can look in the waters or in his drawings and unify his image and that of the reflex: the self-portrait is already finished!
Either by having propitiated the provocation towards more serious questions of life – the built projection of the subject in the society – or his simplest customs as having a short rest in an armchair; Fabelo has the aptitude to present it with grace and elegance. Eight years ago – concerning being decorated with the distinction of National Award of Plastic Arts – he said that his best self-portrait was his work and that it was unfinished. I think that the painter without let him himself be seduced like Narcissus, already can look in the waters or in his drawings and unify his image and that of the reflex: the self-portrait is already finished!
