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.

After several years of producing works of marked ideological undertones in collaboration with René Francisco Rodríguez, resorting to numerous formal or conceptual resources, the artist, now on his own, has turned to a more introspective art. His move toward Zen Buddhism could be perhaps responsible for his search for harmony in apparent or actual opposites, in drawings or installations, at times disconcerting and difficult to decipher.

Painter and engraver?with a preference for collographs?he admits having been profoundly influenced by the colour and forms of African art, whose themes he has explored all along his work, in which coherence and humanism stand out. The sharp contrast of colour responds to his particular symbolism and to a very personal lyricism that establishes a quick emotional connection with the viewer.

The fine drawing, the explosion of greens and blues, the delicate transparencies applied to the omnipresent female nude, all bestow a voluptuous sensuality to his obsessive search for beauty. Plant motifs, with an evanescent lightness, create a dreamlike atmosphere that the artist controls at will to tone down or emphasize the eroticism of his enigmatic women or the mating of his levitating couples.

As a member of the Arte-Calle Group (1988-1989), he did performances and public interventions; he is also a pioneer of digital art in Cuba. He has used different genres, including photography, video, drawing, painting and performances, to express profound philosophical concerns and to question dogmas regarding issues such as identity, a sense of belonging, rationality and the mechanisms of art. A disconcerting artwork that provides more questions than answers, it demands an alert viewer who is willing to participate.

With an aesthetics that some critics have called 'post-medieval', but that owes much to the interpretation of universal art and the exploration of national identity, installed in a fantastic space where any mixture is possible and where sorrows can be enveloped in softness and candor, a search for spirituality that traps the most diverse public can be found in the work of this artist.

His overflowing imagination, nurtured by popular Caribbean mythology, creates a magical world both calm and violent, populated by mythical beings, such as the güije, where the exultant colour and the line used as a constructive element are a praise to the fusion of Man and Nature in all its manifestations. An absolute originality and the deeply-rooted Cuban character rank high in his paintings and in his work with polychromed wood and clay.