Moises Finale: CUBAN TOURIST OR IDENTITY PROBLEMS

Havana: Cuban Tourist or Identity Problems is the title of exhibit to be opened by Moises Finale (Cardenas, 1957) at the Galeria Habana on Feb. 9 at 5:00 pm.

Some ten pieces made by this artist during the month of December will be exposed. Dr. Yolanda Wood, who has observed Finale’s iconography, has this to say: “He comes from the discourse he has created in time as his work never relinquishes the enjoyment of the experimentation of new resources and unconventional means.”

And she goes on to say: “Thick, visible stitches overlap the canvas and an odd material as if it were a theater curtain; hiding is revealing. With their pompous and solemn brightness, the cloths glaze the surfaces of the paintings by yielding reflections. Thus, those who look at them see themselves over a splash of the Ifa Orishas’ symbolic colors. They match against the cloths painted with ordinary enamel that underscores the edges of the painting, the inner tubes of Chinese-made bicycles with their straight valves jutting out, hailing from those stores that sell industrial items in Cuban pesos. Long ductile tapes from a black material are used to weave the skin and the painters simulate standup sex in profiled figurines…”

Moises Finale, one of the most representative painters of the 1980s, was a member of the Trayectoria Cubana project, begotten by art critics Pierre Gaudibert, Helene Lasalle and Giovanni Joppolo. In 1989, Danielle Miterrand and the France Liberté Foundation invited him to visit Paris for a cycle of exhibits at the Nesle and Le Monde de l’ Art galleries.

He’s represented Cuba in different contemporary art fairs, like Art Chicago, ARCO, Art Miami, Palm Beach, Art Madrid, FIAC, among others. His artworks are exposed in the permanent hall of Cuban painting at the National Museum of Fine Arts in Havana and in numerous public and private collections, foundations and museums across the Americas and Europe.

His expositions have been mounted in such locales as the National Museum of Fine Arts in Havana (Herido de sombras, 2001); the Salon de los Pasos Perdidos, UNESCO (Aquí vivo yo, 2003), and more recently at the Collage Habana gallery (El peso de su cuerpo, 2009), during the Tenth Havana Biennial.