Thinking Contra La Toxina

The exercise of the review on the review doesn’t have an important presence in Cuba. The truth is that within the handful of specialized magazines that we have, there is some room for reviews on books written by researchers and experts on the world of fine arts. But, as we know, such books are still scarce. Therefore, the level of reflection and analysis carried out by experts on the work of other expertsis still insufficient. What could we say about the sort of art reviews that is scattered on the magazines? The so-necessary feedback for those who give our opinion in the public space is only spread, and sometimes it isn’t, by the hand of rumor. That’s the reason why I’d like to imagine a magazine exclusively aimed at thinking on our review; a publication that would be the critic self-conscience of art review in Cuba.

As long as such magazine doesn’t exist, the safest way for critics to obtain printed appreciations on their work, seems to be the compilation on a book of years of work. That’s why, I don’t take as premature, but strategic, the fact that young Cuban art critic and curator Piter Ortega Nuñez (Havana, 1982) has recently published his first compiling volume (Contra la toxina, 2011), edited by Juan Marinello Cuban Institute of Cultural Research. Once again, Piter takes the lead; slips through the hole of a needle; appears on the media promoting his book; packs the National Museum of Fine Arts with public on its launching day; and does what becomes him an expert: spurs on the “circle” of art, generates polemics, no one stays indifferent. I know that many people get annoyed by his successful marketing strategy, but if there is something we should learn from Piter, and not only the younger generation, is the skillful way to carry out theoretical lessons on promotion, P.R and cultural marketing.

Contra la toxina is a compendium of works published by the author, during the last six years, in different magazines and exhibition catalogues, in Cuba and abroad. The structure of the book indicates the three main directions in which Ortega Nuñez has developed his work as a critic. The first section groups four brief essays in which he formulates questions related to art, and belligerently goes over them. We find in the second chapter texts aimed at interpreting and conceptualizing the production of different creators, most of them are young artists. And the last section includes reviews on different exhibition events –Piter has written a considerable amount of texts on this genre, ten of which are included here.

On his preliminary notes, the author starts saying that the book we have in our hands is “definitely post-critic”; and I’m about to debate this criteria. In this sense, Ortega Nuñez puts forward arguments expressing that, in those texts, he takes “review as fiction, as a game with language, and never as absolute truths”; that he “completely renounces the principle of veracity or certainty linked to the writing act”; that he allows himself “the use of licenses and ambiguities that can’t be touched by the traditional review”; his texts are “a pretext to fable, to conceive apocryphal worlds, different realities in which levels of correspondence with the analyzed object are not important”; and “the referent is an excuse for literary immersion, the delight on the joy and pleasure of writing”. In fact, all of this is related to a way to assume the review exercise far from certain kind of review that takes elements from a quasi-old-fashioned positivism –which in our context shouldn’t be linked to the academy, in a general and abstract way. On one side we have the kind of review that is characterized by the writing sobriety, a methodical correction on its way to analyze the studied object, and ends up being boring and drowsy for readers. On the other hand, we have an impressionist review, with plenty of pretentious adjectival use, that misuses terms and categories to pretend theoretical adequacy; and flows –just as Piter points out in one of the first chapter essays– from the description to the sententious and conclusive appreciation, jumping with Olympic pole the interpretative activity, which is the main cultural responsibility of a critic. Low speculative level and interpretative weakness are common elements, as well as the conspiracy –I can’t say if aware– against a reading experience that can be attractive, stimulating, and provocative. However, becoming radically separated–just like Piter has tried to do– from that tedious referentialness, from the impressionist adjectival use, the anorgasmic writing, the affection for data and the artist’s “dictation”, doesn’t invariably lead to the post-review. But this polemic demands more space and, since it isn’t important in terms of the value of Contra la toxina, I cut it off in this point.

What I do perceive, in all texts, is the constancy of a singular author voice. The overall truth is that Ortega doesn’t pay too much attention to the observance of the logical and lineal order of the three more-conventional phases of art review (description, interpretation and appreciation): he can start with appreciation opinions and finish with descriptions; he doesn’t actually care about it. He doesn’t avoid the fact of being inconsistent to himself: he can put on the table certain argument and, afterwards, he denies it in other texts and circumstance. According to Ortega, these are deliberate acts of his chameleon-like sensibility. In my opinion, those are contradictions –changes of orientation and opinion, findings that make him doubt previous ideas and certainties– inherent to a formation process, maturing of a so-complex work. Much of his potential lies on the intensity of what he writes and the conviction, or passion, of what he defends. He is a sharp art critic, very skillful for colloquialisms, who knows how to merge popular wisdom and theoretical knowledge with an agile writing rhythm, with assurance and flashing language changes. Readers enjoy such characteristics. There is a double-checked fact: his texts can irritate some people, cause and uproar, opposite criteria, but they are never boring. Piter does it so people that begin reading his initial words, can’t stop until they reach the final period. And that merit already turns him into a more-than-necessary critic. But the mastery of the rhetoric art (which is the art of seduction, in terms of attraction or repulsion) wouldn’t be that successful if isn’t accompanied by an ingenious interpretative work. Our young Ortega learned it by heart from one of his most appreciated teachers: Rufo Caballero. I have already said that the main cultural responsibility of an art critic lies on interpretation, because interpreting means, in essence, to produce knowledge on the studied object –an artwork, exhibition or artistic process. It takes special ability to articulate senses, which entails the mobilization of the entire knowledge horizon targeting the hermeneutic dialogue of comprehension. There is no doubt that Piter is very talented, what makes him a responsible critic (since he responds to his intellectual responsibility), without renouncing to his inflammatory spirit... Who said that both conditions are exclusive? We already have Contra la toxina to give evidence of it.

On the prologue, Cuban art critic and researcher Rafael Acosta de Arriba affirms that the importance of the books “lies on its testimony on young art, the art that is presently being created in the country”; and I totally support this criteria. Piter Ortega has become the champion of certain aesthetic trend on today’s Cuban art, a sort of pictorial boom, led by young artists he has put together in several curatorial projects. Perhaps that’s his most outstanding contribution to Cuban artistic arena: to discover and conceptualize an area of emerging artistic production. A work that undoubtedly requires great witticism and sensibility to recognize artistic talent and quality; but also a significant dose of confidence on your own taste and criteria, and bravery to express an opinion where no one has looked before. That’s why Piter is always in the center of a different polemic. Nowadays, the entire Havana is talking about Stainless, his most recent curatorial proposal. On the text written for the catalogue, Piter says that “a new group has born in the history of Cuban art”[i], that we are facing “the seeds of a genuine poetics of collective orientation signed up in the most avant-garde tradition of group aesthetics on Cuban contemporary art …”. That’s our Piter Ortega Nuñez, pure risk, pure audacity. Let’s hope time doesn’t make him go rusty, for the sake of our artistic circle; and that the boys from Stainless don’t make him lose his face, especially for their own sake.

Havana, November 2011