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Fairs get me bored
20April
Articles

Fairs get me bored

I could sell you the glass for one euro if you show me that the idea is conceptually flawed.

El País

Why does a half full glass of water cost twenty thousand euros?

ABC

The star of Arc is the glass of water half empty or half full of Wilfredo Prieto.

Arte 10

The glass of water of Wilfredo Prieto is choking the old guard of art.

El Confidencial

The Cuban artist revolutionizes ARCO with a glass of water for 20 000 euros.

El Insurgente

Wilfredo Prieto

You have been now the hype of the Spanish press at the Arco Madrid Fair with the controversy surrounding your work Vaso de agua medio lleno (half-full glass of water). And we are in this old house of Vedado, propped on sawn long wooden benches, on a site I remember always closed, surrounded by legends.

Art for Excellencies can be very useful, rather than mediate, let your opinions to the reader.

How did you get here at Linea street, again in Cuba, when many people think you are in Barcelona?

This place is almost a base, a study under construction. It is a house of great historical value that requires a complex restoration. Now I do not have time to get into a construction: a place to work until the Biennale and keep everything organized at the same time.

I've never left Cuba. I spent nine years in Barcelona, two in New York and a time in Paris, but there were always for two months and two here, never felt myself an immigrant. I've always had this contact and, indeed, every time I have more desire to be in Havana and Cuba in general. Right now I'm working on a project in Sancti Spiritus that will take at least five years.

Five years? And will be located in a place you really care?

With good luck. It is a highway in the shape of infinity and one kilometer long in the countryside, in Zaza del Medio. I always had the desire to do a work in the area where I was born. It is five hundred meters from the National Highway at kilometer 342. It is a work with engineers conditions to real scale, carrying vials, lighting ... It has just been approved by the government of the province of Sancti Spiritus.

Are you working in the biggest exhibition you have prepared?

Yes, you can say so, because it is part of a series of exhibitions that have previously been roaming in two museums, in KunstvereinBraunschweig and Smak, in Ghent, and ends in Havana, where you will have different conditions, because the space changes. There is also a new book coming soon that summarizes my work and will be presented in this last exhibition which opens on May 23 at the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes. It will be in the yard, and around fifty pieces.

Along with this, I'm on a project in the bicycle factory of Linea and 18 Streets with the young curators Gretel Medina and Direlia Lazo. We have invited twelve international artists and two Cuban artists. They are therefore from very different places, with a special look to make them dialogue with the Cuban context.

Two major complex projects. One opens the day after the other. We are working nonstop, Saturday and Sunday...

Forgive me if I insist: What makes you concentrate in Havana, while there are more media cities, new art fairs...? Your curator is making you proposals, I guess.

Well, it’s been a long time since I’m not interested in fairs. I almost never attend in person. When fairs were popular, I went as a hobby, to understand what happened. I get bored: I nearly do not see art, and ultimately I do not meet my friends. They do not longer amuse me; I think they are pretty bad as phenomenon. I understand they are 

opened to a different audience, but I am more interested in biennials, because there is a different way of looking at art, a completely different respect.

The fair is obviously a market phenomenon, it is not so interesting. You can learn from it, what is happening, what is being sold; but that does not bring you more than a moment, it makes little sense as an artist to follow it.  Prices are relative:  if an artist sells very expensive does not mean it's a good artist. Conversely, one who has 

never sold anything can be very good. Unfortunately, many international biennials are having fairs references. Because they are the ones that are having an economy. The trivialization is a disease with contemporary with art, and there are fewer serious spaces in terms of artistic production. It is very difficult to have that taster of what really has an experimental sense.

Do you enjoy somehow that controversy accompanies your work?

Not at all. Sometimes it is even harmful to try to understand a piece. The work is independent of the controversy. Often that can tend to confuse. It's very different to when a work or an artist that is interested in it, because they are controversies activating a content. In my case, yes I am interested with the work One Million Dollar to enable the speculation in the media, since that is its sense; but for others, it is not at all my interest.

When you work with the public you are exposed to the controversy. If you are a shoemaker and you are fixing shoes, the public will say if it is right or wrong. It's like selling tickets on the train window; you are exposed to being yelled at or praise. You're always doing an exchange, and when you make a work of art, you do it with it, but the work begins its exchange with the public. It can go completely unnoticed or can be the explosive moment, as in the case of half-full glass of water, a piece of 2006. There was a time when no one talked about it. And others did. And I do not think they try to make provocative works, but what people understand by provocation or not, which is quite different.

The public has to be smart. It's in a show. If you go to a supermarket and buy a bottle of wine, you know that you are not a wine tasting. There are places to enjoy and understand art, there are places to buy and sell art.

I still have a question: if it is not your desire this succession of controversies that travels through your work, is your curator who knows to place it in the market?

You must have a frequency with a curator, as a brotherhood in the way of understanding art. I could not work with a gallery owner who likes only the painting. The gallery also makes an organization function and market. It's lucky it exists, because today there is a methodology of how to exhibit in a museum, and it is becoming more elaborate. You live in a society of discipline, are you going to put yourself inside a cave? The work of a curator can be very dirty, and at the same time be very interesting. An artist does not always have a gallery, but when he has one that gives him the freedom to create, as I do, and respects his desire to do, it is a good ally.

I am quite incredulous with the news: they are manipulated, exaggerated and depending on the interests, especially today, what and how you look on the Internet. You click and say "Paris Hilton has lifted her skirt in ... '. It never ends up in the headline news. Which is paying for much press is your ability to click there, not what is being transmitted. I guess this has to match the salary or the "goggleísta" prestige.

There is a lot of serious press, but little about the massiveness of the bad press. We are living in a time of that massive in media, art, especially in the art market. Today an artist references are given often by the market, they are given by fair, by gallery. It is not given by the elements or the work you're doing. And I do not think an artist should be influenced by what the press says, both positively and negatively. If they are speaking well of you, there has to be someone who will change you. You may be reflection and say, "I'm wrong, because I'm doing what everyone likes." Or vice versa: when you talk bad, saying: "I am proposing something new; therefore, the image is uncomfortable.” The media can not be the direction of what you are creating.

After the work goes out of your workshop, it has a separate life to you, you no longer own it, it takes on a life of its own and reaches unsuspected points. One example is the glass of water.

Do you exhibit it for the first time, and where?

I do not remember where I exhibited it. They are new lives; the works take complete independence, as Apolítico had it at the time. I did it in 2001 and since then it has been exhibited twice a year at least, sometimes up to three in the same country. These are issues that I can not be deciding. The same thing happened with Políticamente correcto, with Agua Bendita and others. There are several works that surprise me, but for me is not a measurer.

So sometimes I find things online. I wish I could clone myself to read everything. There is so much to read and much to do. But I'm in Cuba; I have an hour a day on Internet and use it to select specific things.

Did you use it more than television?

Do you feel it has benefited you?

Television is null for me. I have no TV. It’s been twelve years without physically having it. I feel it is an imposition one has. I prefer to select a bit what I see.

Did the Superior Institute of Art serve you as a nutrient of the person you are today?

Not only the ISA. There are many factors. The Higher Institute of Art is one of the major, but I give the same importance to the elementary school where I studied art at the middle level, as well as the House of Culture. Sometimes these experiences are less significant as a millimeter angle error on a spacecraft going to the Moon: ending up being kilometers and kilometers of error. Training is essential for an artist, and it changes the whole experience.

I give thanks for having such training in Cuba, at a time when education was resplendent in art. I also thank the Special Period: We learned a lot. I'm always saying they are the frills that I had in life: eating with limitations, because suddenly there were other human values among people. And that marked me forever. You have another notion of things, other assessment criteria: the lack, the pleasure of lacking, right? Nobody can lie to you when you are in an international context.

If you were asked now from any other part of the world what matters most to you in your projection as an artist apart from the Havana Biennial, in Zaza del Medio, what would you answer?

Do what I please. What I want to do. Not having a concession for nothing. And I enjoy it. I think when you do what you want to do, is when it makes sense what you're doing. When you are not indebted to nothing, and you're talking about creation, when you are creating something new, it is when you're taking a risk continuously. To let your imagination flow, and that the work leads you. It is what ultimately moves everything, and that experimentation is what makes you leave the monotony. Being in something new, perhaps in new experiments, studying them with engineers, physicists, with producers of art ... It is what can make you understand life and reality.

I think the biggest mistake is to do the opposite: to get you into a stamp, in a way so people can recognize the different people. It is the biggest of boredom. Making a mark does not make sense. It makes sense if the mark appears when you have no way to let go, for reasons of culture, of training: innate issues. But not for the proposal of search of a market, of a style. They are quite outdated formulas in the creation and counterproductive to the sense of creating.