Valdés Yasniel is one of those goldsmiths who think that jewelry should reflect the times we live. Dissimilar materials ranging from fabrics to bakelite, overlaps the metal in original designs that can be displayed as rings, bracelets, pendants, earrings and small corporeal sculptures.
Clinging to silver as favorite metal he experiences, innovates, creates and deploys his imagination in different techniques, styles, materials, shapes and color ranges to deliver contemporary jewelry infused with the routine and his creative personality.
His work, guided by a sophisticated eclecticism, since it has been nurtured by various foreign and domestic influences, as well as dissimilar architectural styles and from the so- called decorative and applied arts, is characterized by the attempt of the materials, the solutions, the structural, the volume, the asymmetrical and constructivist.
Several awards in the International Crafts Fair (FIART) and other events support his successful career despite his youth. Yasniel is not subject to a semi-precious gemstone for his combinations, he prepares his own resins and designs the crystals he uses; he does not work thinking on any specific material, he changes it, drills and cuts it. He also customize at will resins and fuse them to other means and formats.
These days his creations can be seen in Factoria Habana, where he just opened a two-person show along the goldsmith Mayelín Guevara in which a dozen jewelry surprises the viewer by its strong influence from the forms, materials and colorful pop art precursor trend of postmodernism that rescued popular images as opposed the prevailing cultural elitism in Fine Arts of those years.
Valdes has a very personal style that distinguishes him between disparate conceptual lines of the current Cuban goldsmith. He soon learned the growing phenomenon of jewelry and resorts also to codes of the world of visual arts. Experimenting with materials and forms make the same piece can be seen as a ring or other object and assessed from different perspectives and angles.
We talked to this artist that works since he was 19 in different expressive languages associated with jewelry:
What influences do you recognize in your creations?
I am the result of a lot of information and influences that have been compiled over the years to get to my own style. I have received from Rosana Vargas with mirror brightness she achieves on silver and minimalism. Then I met Mayelín Guevara and the work of Jorge Gil, who are a bit more structural and have more to do with architecture, shapes, and volumes. No flirting a lot with his work I was finding my way.
I acknowledge that I have great influence of art deco about experimentation of materials, geometric shapes and use of color. The first show I did with Rosana had a lot of this style because like the deco experimented with many materials. I started taking these style motifs, wiping it a little and staying with lines and movement of shapes and geometry.
The new phase I display in this show is different. I couldn’t find resin anywhere and then I found an old button that had a clear acrylic with a carved flower and I wondered if I could color it, and then these colored acrylic works out. Constructivism, steel glass, has a distinctly architectural basis of other styles, but I am still dragging the lines of art deco.
Why did you become a goldsmith?
I always wanted to do fashion, I worked with the designer Yari Romagosa on a project with recycled clothes for a biennial in the Haydee Santamaria library of the Casa de las Americas; with designers with the Higher Institute of Industrial Design (ISDI)I participated with her on the catwalk, I did the haircut.
I wanted to do fashion but I found Roxana and her jewelry, she moves to behind my house and I am impressed with the smooth gloss of her flat pieces. The first thing that came to mind was to make buttons, I wanted to make silver buttons that were part of the same work. I wanted to do fashion but not a commercial, but one that retains an artistic value beyond the utilitarian. I like to create a whole picture of a person, from the clothes, makeup, jewelry and style in general.
How would you define your work?
It’s a challenge because I get bored of the forms and I like to experiment and renew every day, I like to go for what I want and the result is my innovation, that’s what inspires me to keep creating, perfecting and distinguishing myself among the various ways of doing in Cuban contemporary jewelry.
she is realy excellent and very creative!
would you like to know who’s in my opinion the best and the master of cuban contemporay jewerly designer, Osvaldo Castilla ?