I had to return to Pinar del Rio to understand Utopito, his energy and failures, its quintessence. Only through the return trip I got to feel like him, the changes of his steps from kilometer 148 of the National Highway.
We can rebuild Utopito’s biography through impressions, anecdotes, and fragments of a singular life, dull at the same time, of a Pinar del Rio man, a Cuban from the westernmost area in the country, preferred space of our geography. Occasionally Pascual and Angulo accompany him. Through them are manifested, is made known at that moment-unseen to the common eye, that they possess the rare quality to reveal to us the most significant thoughts.
Uto is a prototype of Pinar del Rio man, forgets the past, criticizes the present and expects the tomorrow. He loves traveling and craves inevitably sea like a it is the way somewhere, as if the future had concrete expression that could be traced in the pages of a School Atlas. His existence is due to the disagreement, a visceral and unconditional sense of personal freedom and boundless imagination of the plastic artist Pedro Pablo Oliva, Pinar del Rio chronicler that continues to amaze us. Uto is his creation, his most intimate and newest associate. It came through a thematic line the master is currently working on and includes paintings, drawings from mixed procedures on cardboard, a group of cartoony drawings in the manner of humorous cartoons and an installation exponent.
Technical and conceptual the artist reinvents himself in this series, Utopia and dissent for more information, I would say it is subliminally inserted to wonder as another of his characters. The wonder of discovery, the reinterpretation of reality, a vocation that finds milestones in the history of the traditional graphics in Cuba. I mean those unforgettable characters that more than translating, rather recreated everyday life, such as Abela’s Bobo.
This series and the surreal empathy its main character, should be shown to the public soon on a tour traveling and to some extent predictable. Because Utopito needs, and rightfully so, know his hometown Pinar, and then move to the capital to try his luck. Similarities aside, its natural character involves an alliance with moderate optimism phases involved in the recurrence of melancholy, fits, inconsistencies and subtle eloquence of irony.
We have to wait for news near the onset of this new sequence to reach the exhibition circuits and I personally wish him the best of luck and his utopia safe journey and returning prodigal. After all, his origin is part of its circumstance, and its being universal.
The strange ramblings of Utopito from the Utopias and Dissidence Series
