The exhibition agenda for 2014 of Los Carpinteros , reknown representatives of Cuban visual arts, is already full of commitments. One of the most immediate is the exhibition “Bazar”, to be held in Madrid’s Ivorypress Gallery from February 18, 2014. The Cuban duo, who exposes for a second time in the space, will present on this occasion a number of pieces of small and medium format accompanied by three videos, a novelty in the work of the artists.
Bazar announces a pleasing visual surprises substantiated in a change in concerns of the artists around the human figure, whether of physiological, ideological or consumption order. Los Carpinteros´ work encloses an anthropological perspective, pointing organic and symbolic processes . Since their beginnings to the present they have questioned the functionality and implementation of architecture, furniture and design. This will be the first time they will use video pieces as the backbone of an exhibition.
Three films will be displayed in the exhibition that will serve as guide. One of them is titled Conga Irreversible and documents the performance of the same name made by the duo during the 11th Havana Biennial, in 2012. It involves hundreds of collaborators in addition to the thousands of people passing through the central Paseo del Prado, space through which marched the first carnival dancing groups that gave rise to this popular celebration in Cuba. The work reverses the sense of choreography and music; it also suppresses the emergence of bright colors, characteristic of traditional Cuban troupe, which festive and collective nature becomes in cultural communication tool.
As the art critic Meyken Barreto explains: “One might think that Conga … transgresses, subverts the traditional practice of this feast, but what really happens is that it has come to settle in conception and existence, in the same Havana’s enclave where black slaves and impoverished residents paraded, but this time in the second decade of the 21st century, with new visuality, with renewed concepts, and a different way of dealing with the liberating march of the ever troupes.”
The other pieces are ¨Pellejo¨ and ¨Rumba sin oxigeno¨. The first is a black and white projection showing human aging from sexuality. The video was filmed in a real scenario and through a single sexual act you can see the physical changes that occur in the human body over time. The second video describes the journey through the Pyrenees of a musician with his drums in tow. Also recorded in a real setting, it is a sound piece exploring large areas of silence and noise, where the notion of pilgrimage takes center stage as abstract and personal ritual.
These three videos are supplemented by other works. Los Carpinteros we re inspired by the advertising format to play on three medium-format billboards the phrases: “La cosa está de pinga”, “Odio como suenan las maracas” and “Me cago en el corazón de tu madre”. These are expressions that are extracted from the most popular Cuban slang and are relocated in a new context.
In addition, the exhibition will feature two portraits that give continuity to previous work. There are drawings cut in aluminum and retro illuminated, technique used for political propaganda in some regions of Latin America. Through LED light strips that evoke the portraits of Che and Camilo in Revolution Square, in Havana, pictures of two current characters whose activity encloses an anti-capitalist and social dissatisfaction projection appear: Noam Chomsky and Santiago Sierra. These portraits address the traditional hero concept.
¨El gran rasta, ¨ in the same context, is another work of the sample. The piece reproduces white dreadlocks thoroughly made with different types of artificial hair. A work that achieves the perfect combination of a hair that comes from a color and goes discoloring with the years, warning of a past and a present of rebelliousness and civil dissatisfaction.
After touring galleries in Hong Kong and New York in late 2103, Los Carpinteros return to Ivorypress Cultural center (Comandante Zorita, 48, Madrid), where they had previously exposed the sample “Drama Turquesa” in 2010.
Art group
Los Carpinteros, art group founded in 1991 in Havana. It is made up by Marco Castillo (1971, Camagüey, Cuba) and Dagoberto Rodríguez (1969, Las Villas, Cuba), both graduates of the Higher Institute of Art (ISA by its Spanish acronym), Havana, Cuba. The group begins together with Alexandre Arrechea (1970, Trinidad, Cuba), who in 2003 launched his solo career. Its work begins using recycled materials, which they worked with craft techniques. They focused their creative process in the conceptualization of the construction activity as such, to make it the subject of their work. They live and work between Havana and Madrid.
