Cuban artists, Cuba, Wilfredo Lamb, Raul Cordero, Ernesto Rancaño, Nelson Domínguez, Alexis Leyva (Kcho), Los Carpinteros, Ever Fonseca, Ernesto Leal, Joan Capote

Damián Aquiles
(1972)

Aquiles has obsessively favoured scrap material from the bodywork of old cars or containers of the most varied types to make small walking human figures, or perfectly flattened squares grouped according to an impeccable arrangement. He has not abandoned canvas, however, using a combination of techniques to produce an abstract work where graffiti connotes the emotional impact in the direction that the artist is interested in.

Boats, rafts, oars, islands?like metaphors of the Journey, of Man's inner and outward migrations, of the eternal need to set sail, to discover, to search beyond the horizon?prevails in the work of this artist who has strained the expressive potentials of rustic and poor-quality materials, demanding unconditional complicity.

Inclined to employ Cuban symbols, whether the palm leaf hat, the figure of National Hero José Martí—protagonist of several of his series—or certain popular religious images, the artist uses painting and engraving to question ethical, social or historical conducts, or to express existentialist crises inherent to the times; still, this does not remove the internal poetry of his visual metaphors.

In Alicia Leal's work, in which one can appreciate the appropriation of medieval colour codes, spatial layout and a gusto for decoration, women play a central role, either providing refuge as in the recurring image of the Virgin of Charity, patron saint of Cuba, or in flying beings, who refer to other dimensions, and even in the series dedicated to the circus where women participate in a microcosmic world of subtle similarities with society,

The search for post-Renaissance and Baroque pictorial visualizations, the resources of minimalism, drama in composition and light, expressiveness in blank spaces, a deliberately uncompleted narrative, make his apparent still lifes attract the senses of the viewer who at the same time is compelled to make a reflection sustained on intuition, rather than certainties.

Influenced by Cubism and one of the initiators of the Cuban avant-garde movement, she recreates very personal themes, expertly using colour in windows, Cuban fruits, tropical flowers and elements that are easily identifiable as Cuban in nature; the marked colouring is generally delimited by thick black lines which are reminiscent of stained-glass windows of 19th century Cuban colonial mansions. .

One of the renovators of engraving in the 1990s, the artist has set out to use engravings on different mediums, to paste them on diverse surfaces, to articulate them, giving his work not only a three-dimensional space but also motion. Using mostly xylography, his work evokes concepts such as reality, time, history, seeking to document everyday life and the transcendence of the moment, giving these concepts an independent life in his work.

One of the very few contemporary Cuban artists who is not a graduate from the art educational system, he insists, with peculiar irony, on the ambivalence of everyday life, keeping an eye as well on erotic and eschatological themes. A member of Grupo Hexágono, he has availed himself of caricatures, drawings?precise and concise?paintings, sculptures and installations to review, with an aesthetic close to conceptual and minimalist art, both the events that happen around him and the universal instincts of man. He is also a critic and essayist on art themes.

To question cultural processes expanding towards historical, sociological, ethnic, anthropological or philosophical perspectives?according to the artist?is a purpose that is fulfilled through painting, installations, performances or video art as a means of examining and taking part in the increasingly urgent debate on the relationships of power in today's society. A markedly conceptual art that aspires to disturb the viewer's automatism, shake and mobilize his consciousness and break down stereotypes.