Crossover
9th March - 5th May, 2001
About the exhibition:
‘Crossover’ is the title that Douglas Perez Castro has given to his
exhibition. It is in reference to the artist crossing over boundaries from Latin
American Cuba to Anglo-speaking Trinidad, with both islands and their variety
of people and culture. The work, which Perez Castro describes as ‘super
baroque’ confronts several ideas, not necessarily the technique of
the work, but the issues that affect Cuban society as a whole. He paints in
a very traditional style, used by the vanguardia Cuban painters of the 1840s,
which deals with the visual aspects of the work, e.g. colour, composition, drawing,
technique and craft. Some of the Cuban painters whose work Perez Castro appropriates
are not necessarily known within the
English-speaking Caribbean. Artists such as Landeluze, Miahle and La Plante.
These artists painted ‘the Cuban experience’, such as the sugar plantations,
the Africans and the mulattos in Cuba and their influence on the society, both
racially and religiously, and the political culture of Cuba, at that time. Perez
Castro however, makes a statement about his culture and society by including
a humourous element in his works. He says "I am very ironic about these
topics. I do not want to use German, French or even Dutch techniques, so my
work evolves between my geographic story (Cuba’s economic and social evolution)
and the story of art".
Perez Castro mixes this traditional craft with elements of post-modernism. He says that "we waste too much time in this part of the world on issues or topics that no one cares about, and much work is lost doing things that really do not count." He uses this statement in reference to one of his paintings where a young man spends his life cleaning shoes, and at the end of his lifetime, he achieves no joy, no lesson is learned, nor does he get any satisfaction.
In another painting, Perez Castro describes Cuba as a ‘banana republic’, which is a phrase that Cubans find offensive as it goes against the pride with which Cubans view their country. It describes Cuba as an island of workers, with people from everywhere, that opposes the ideal view of a sovereign state of pride and people proud of their history. He openly shares the irony of these situations with the viewer.
Douglas Perez Castro’s personal
statement:
In general, Cubans have existed for years without the influences of Western
Art or First World cultures encroaching on their daily lives. Perez Castro says
that the typical Cuban concept of art, which is also the case in the Caribbean,
is that artists do artwork to please everyone, and not necessarily the work
that they would like to do themselves. Paintings are produced for public consumption,
and the public’s ability to understand the work, rather than artists producing
works that make statements, social or otherwise. Cuba was never introduced to
modern artistic styles, such as Dadism or Cubism, and Perez Castro thinks that
the Cuban art community needs confrontation and challenges in order to grow
and learn how other experiences can affect them, and their work.
About the artist:
Douglas Perez Castro is currently at CCA7 on Caribbean Contemporary Arts International
Residency Programme. He has been working in his studio over the past two months,
on various oil paintings and works on paper as well as a ‘light box’
installation. He is currently a Professor of Painting at the Instituto Superior
de Arte, in Havana, Cuba. Perez Castro is a fan on European comics, and has
an interest in writing scripts for comics and film.. He says that the same way
a film tells a story so does his work, and he interested in pursuing filmmaking
later on. Exhibitions of his works have taken him from Cuba to the United States,
Chile, Spain, Brussels and Mexico..
‘Crossover’ was displayed
in The InterAmericas Space at CCA7 from March 9th to May 5th, 2001.