Quisiera ser Wifredo Lam… (pero no se va a poder) (I´d like to be Wifredo Lam…but it won´t be possible) is the title of the exhibit presented at the Wi-fredo Lam Centre in Old Havana until February next year with more than 70 works (paintings, drawings, installations, video), produced between 1973 and November 2014.
“The title of the exhibit is obviously part of a paradoxical mechanics of making homage. I think this is as a new character, a fool artist, tah would be as my alter ego, who thinks it could be repeated. This is maybe the most funny way to homage Wifredo Lam, and to emphasize humbly this is impossible to match”, told Flavio Garciandía to Granma newspaper.
The ¨ideal tour¨ through the sample starts in the room entitled ¨I insulted Flavio Garciandía in Havana¨ (Yo insulté a Flavio Garciandía en La Ha¬bana), which is also the title of a book that gathers the most complete information about the artist and his work, available here for the public, as explained the exhibit´s curator Cristina Vives.
In the upper floor of the center will be exhibited one of Flavio´s most paradigmatic pieces, Todo lo que usted necesita es amor (1975), other less known pieces as another picture of Zaida del Río from 1973, besides Declaraciones, work that accompanies everyone of his exhibits since 2000 and that proposes what he considers every artist rights and duties.
From this room starts a non exactly chronologic tour through Flavio´s work from his abstract period or of questioning of the identity, or, even, of the possible fragility of the national identity in front of other cultures, presenting works of his series El síndrome de Marco Polo (1986) and Refranes (1985), and sketches and watercolors never exhibited before.
The simple will also include the pieces Frijoles coloraos, o Segundo viaje de Ad Rein¬hardt a La Habana (1994) and Frijoles blancos o Malevich and Ryman en La Habana, otra vez (2006), in which Fla¬vio homage some of the greatest paradigms of world contemporary art from fictitious visits those made to Cuba.
One of the last spaces of the sample entitled El cuarto mun¬do… (el que está entre el tercero y el quinto),includes the paintings the artist made for the exhibit specifically in which he cites Wifredo Lam again, this time impregnated of what could be —according to Crisitina Vives— in a very subtle and sensual way, all the beauty of Flavio´s painting.
The curator highlighted this is not a retrospective exhibit, but an anthological one, due his prolific work:
“But there is a more important reason, during his whole career, Flavio has been very versatile, as in each one of his periods or researches, he has presented a renewed image, of permanent experimentation. An artist who is closing this exhibit with works done in 2014 and who presents us a new road in his work, an artist who cannot be analyzed with a retrospective, which is, definitely, a finite vision”.
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