Miami cool is the name that Cuban painter Luis Enrique Camejo has chosen for an exhibition that will be on display until the end of May at the Pan American Art Projects. The gallery is opening its doors for the second time to the work of this artist, who uses the recurring icon of cities.<\/p>\n
The idea for the exhibition of 21 pieces came about in 2011 during the painter\u2019s first visit to Miami: \u201cThey are all real images of Miami,\u201d and each captures a perfectly recognizable place.<\/p>\n
Camejo (Pinar del R\u00edo, 1971) paints large; that is, he feels \u201cmore comfortable\u201d working with large-format paintings. In fact, he confesses that his studio\/workshop \u2013located on Infanta street in the working-class, clamorous municipality of Cerro, in the Cuban
\ncapital\u2013 does not have a single easel, palette or thin brush. \u201cI paint with large brooms that are the same size as two paintbrushes, and I use basins and buckets for mixing colors, and then I apply solvents that turn the paint into liquid. And, far from representing, I place the paint on the canvas; that is, I exploit the resources of the material itself.\u201d<\/p>\n
To make Miami cool, \u201cinspired by that city, but made in Havana,\u201d Camejo followed his usual procedure or method, which is using photographs as a sketch. \u201cI take the photo thinking about the final work. Life goes by so quickly that it is impossible to capture the moment, and all of the paintings have that sense of drifting away; they are like flashes snared with a certain speed \u2013which is not the normal speed at which things go by, except for some places, which are images that are calmer and more frozen in time.\u201d<\/p>\n
The relationship that Camejo establishes with cities is a visceral one, because he believes that his work very much involves atmosphere and sensations, and that it depends on real, not imagined, contact. \u201cI use the city as a symbol of the place where human beings develop, work, think, love, and make philosophy and art.\u201d Every city has its characteristics, he notes, but in his work, they are all treated equally because \u201cin Stockholm, Hong Kong or New York, the human beings who inhabit them share similar pain, nostalgia and longing.\u201d<\/p>\n
The cities that he depicts (absolutely all of them) are monochromatic, and according to what he told OnCuba in an exclusive interview, \u201cthe idea of working with a single color has the purpose of affecting the viewer and awakening certain sensations.\u201d This process of choosing the tone is very intuitive, and arises from what he feels when he visits a given place. He told us, for example, that he is about to begin a new project\u2014which will include 30 large-format pieces\u2014called Ciudades (Cities), and that London will be in black and white tones, because he was very much struck by how \u201cin England all of the traffic signals and house railings are painted black. London is making me do it in black and white,\u201d he said emphatically. Subsequently, Ciudades will be made into a book that will include all of the pieces, as a way of creating a memory, a record.<\/p>\n
While his visual code is realist, his artwork is marked by abstraction, with the evident influence of Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko, both of them representatives of so-called abstract expressionism, but \u201call of this is seen through a filter.\u201d
\nWhile watercolor is one of the most difficult techniques to master, Luis Enrique embraces it easily and confidently. He emphasizes that collectors of Latin American art tend more toward canvas, but in Europe, watercolors on paper are very prestigious and very popular.<\/p>\n
People say that Camejo is an excellent cook, putting the same effort and art into every dish that he does into his painting. While he holds an average of two solo exhibitions annually\u2014always with new work\u2014and participates in various collective projects, he takes his time. \u201cI like to feel the pleasure of creating, and I enjoy that moment, which is unique and unrepeatable,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
While his visual code is realist, his artwork is marked by abstraction, with the evident influence of Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko, both of them representatives of so-called abstract expressionism, but \u201call of this is seen through a filter.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2480,"featured_media":8408,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[43,52],"tags":[],"ppma_author":[33682],"class_list":["post-8425","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-magazine-articles","category-silhouettes"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n