Carlos Manuel Guzman Hernandez or as he is known Carlos Guzman (Havana, 1970) is, above all, an artist. Whether in drawings, paintings or even three-dimensional artifacts his ability to breathe life into dream worlds is found. ssues like isolation and loneliness of the individuals become recurring subjects in his work and they have been present since 1989, just after graduating from San Alejandro Academy, he began working at the Psychiatric Hospital of Havana. His experience during the making of his tem paper would accompany him forever. Therefore, his characters sometimes appear to be submerged in a distant world, prisoners of their thoughts.
In his creations you can find reminiscences of the works of Antonia Eiriz, for whom he has admitted-on more than one occasion, feels a deep admiration or for de Acosta León and Fidelio Ponce. In the same way, he draws links with Renaissance ways of making and medieval painting who has had very good examples in Cuba.
In interview with Eduardo Jimenez Garcia, the artist confesses:
"It also happens that in the Middle Ages, and that is why that era seduces so much, then it took place the development of alchemy and magic takes great strength, which are elements that I frequently incorporate in my painting."
It remains in our memory the legendary Abracadabra and School of Fishes series. In the first, he committed to the relationship between categorical pairs: man / universe / nature / magic. However, in the second, the man struggles with the machine, whose strings are merely social extensions. The machine represents the technological advances of this new era and at the same time, a product of the imagination. Perhaps because the work of this versatile artist cannot be understood without the world of dreams, where a new version rules of disrupted reality.
As you can see along the career of Guzman, the collage is a technique that is extremely attractive to him. In his pieces, he often re-illustrates pages of anatomy books. Figures are metamorphosed towards forming a hybrid between human and the animal nature or the human body and the machine.
There is an esoteric air near the artist’s works, even when his characters seem mired in a deep melancholy, as lost or alienated, lost in a world where they don’t seem to belong.
His talent for converging elements that apparently have no possible association, and test new meanings has been confirmed in each of his series. No matter the art manifestation, Guzman acts as a creator of a world of illusion. Perhaps you could call him a maker of characters and figures, a lover of no reason. However, demiurge is the right word because his creations are an independent ticket to a wonderland or the dream world of a tireless artist that goes by the name of Carlos Guzman.
Author
Estela Ferrer Raveiro
