LongHouse reserve, in the Hamptons of New York, hosted on August 2 the exhibition Rerum Alter Natura by Cuban artist Yoan Capote and as part of the festivities for the welcome, the Voxare Quartet performed in the large nature reserve.
This property in the Hamptons occupies about 16 hectares and each year they host exhibitions in the pavilion and gardens, at the confluence of aesthetics developed by man and what nature owns itself. This fact can be seen in the design of the impressive sculpture parks.
Reserve LongHouse design was inspired by the Ise Shrine in Japan. There are more than 60 sculptures there (including glass and ceramic works) of various international artists including Dale Chihuly, Toshiko Takaezu, Buckminster Fuller, Sol Lewitt, Yoko Ono, Willem de Kooning, Alfonso Ossorio …
Along Rerum Alter Natura they opened the exhibition Circle of Animals / Zodiac Heads of the controversial artist and political activist Ai Weiwei (artistic advisor Bird’s Nest stadium which hosted the Olympic Games in Beijing in 2008). The exhibition consists of 12 pieces inspired by the heads surrounding fountain of Yuanming Yuan imperial retreat in Beijing. This exhibition of Ai Weiwei in a natural environment is a reinterpretation of the zodiacal signs, represented by animals, symbols of power, conflict between cultural paradigms of East and West.
Rerum Alter Natura-The other nature of things-is how Yoan Capote named his exhibition. If we refer to Latin (latinum) as Indo-European language that gave rise to the Romance languages and also highlight its expansionist nature between the great cultures of the Old World, this is a historical fact that by relating it to this title and works, he establishes a link that goes from the emergence of language, its symbolic weight, even to its condition as carrier of cultural elements. In this case the use of the phrase becomes also a gesture of appreciation for a classical language, which witnessed cultural processes determinants for Humanity. On the other hand, when the receiver tries to translate this phrase from Latin into various languages, there is a journey, a supposed change and also new morphological transformations in each language. Preamble decoding starts and complements these sculptures. Travel bags and a pair of “legs” refer to locomotion, the discourse of identity, the nature of things…
Yoan inserted into a natural environment anthropomorphic trees, specifically tree trunks with roots and each with an extension, until each end terminates in the form of footwear and / or the human foot. The horizontal arrangement of the works lying on the lawn or garden, the color of the material used and the absence of branches and leaves, speak to us of dead trees, cut, taken from their natural environment. These descriptive elements also lead to uprooting process, time, to the migration of man, to traffic, to move, inability to adapt – whether man or plant -.
Representational mode that the artist normally uses allows in addition to multiple readings, extending the concept to any cultural context without falling into local phenomena and sometimes to any natural environment. That’s why we could also talk not only about processes that affect the nature of man but also of the relationship, the exchange between people and the physical space, whether natural or artificial. Also in another plane of readings it refers to various environmental phenomena such as global warming, deforestation and drought, all consequences of human action.
The decomposed and anthropomorphic condition of these trunks in the middle of a natural environment may be related to the final stage and pessimistic attempt or hint, of a process of acculturation where new cultural and natural elements of a space, do not amount to a new identity, or replace previous elements, but completely eliminate the subject.
Through these sculptures Yoan built objectively a metaphor that refers to a mental, psychological state – typical of his conceptual speech, symbolic-related to feelings and reactions man experiences during a temporarily or permanently trip.
Yoan besides being an artist is without doubt, a linguist, as many of his works complemented by text make the concept with which he works, from grammar and the nature or meaning of the word. In this case the selected title is related to De Rerum Natura, which is one of the most important works written in Latin in the first century BC by the Roman poet Titus Lucretius Carus. The content of this poem has a great influence of Epicurean philosophy and atomism of Democritus. The thesis defended this literary work is related to anthropocentrism, an idea that Yoan Capote also defends in this exhibition of contemporary art.
I will finish by saying that Yoan Capote has had extensive experience in the world of visual arts nationally and internationally and has received multiple awards. What I should point out is that the three-dimensionality of his work reaches an apparent fourth dimension, it becomes visible, reflects morphologically the human psyche – an abstraction of the actions of man.
