Anish Kapoor and the challenge in art

“Cuba has something to teach the world. While the world is a mess, Cuba experiences a different kind of modernity, and that is its challenge” said Anish Kapoor (Mumbai, 1954), one of the most significant artists of our time. For the opening of his first solo exhibition in Cuba the artist spent a week in Havana. Yet, following the sad departure of Comandante en Jefe Fidel Castro, on November 26, 2016, his exhibition opening was canceled. Whereupon, the exhibition was opened to the public on December 5, 2016.

Thanks to the cultural impact that the exhibition has had on the Cuban art scene, its large turnout of visitors, and at the request of the community, ARTE CONTINUA has not only decided to extend the exhibition until May, but also to invite three art critics and the audience to discuss it within its space in Havana’s Chinatown.

At ARTE CONTINUA, on Wednesday, April 12, 2017, Jorge Fernández Torres, Hamlet Fernández and Erick González León will conduct a debate on the exhibition and examine it in the light of two questions: “Is this art?” and “Why is this art?”.

Jorge Fernández Torres: “Anish Kapoor: Meaning in art as a process that does not end. The visual before the sensation of death and fear. The search for a being that cannot reach the infinite and the creation of a poetic system in the complexity of politics.”

Hamlet Hernández Díaz: “To wander within the former cinema theater Águila de Oro, interacting with the works-interventions by Anish Kapoor from different visual angles, to observe them in a global perspective, to enter the specific seduction-area of each and every one of them, it is like roaming a world in which our empirical certainties on

the space, forms and colors remain suspended or invalidated in front of a new physical notion of reality.”

Erick González León: “The exhibition enhances that bridge, built by Kapoor’s work, in between the phenomenal experience and the abysmal space in which language is not enough to explain the world’s structure. The scales, colors, voids and the fulness consummate the esthetic as a space in which it is possible to sense the being from silence. This is why its voids do not generate anguish.”

“Anish Kapoor and the challenge in art” is part of a Program of art-talks and conferences that ARTE CONTINUA has been hosting since January 2016: “Charlas Continuas”.

JORGE FERNÁNDEZ TORRES serves as the National Fine Arts Museum director. He is an art critic and Professor at the Higher Institute of Arts (ISA).

HAMLET FERNÁNDEZ DÍAZ holds a PhD in Art Science. He is Professor at the Liberal Arts School of the University of Havana, researcher, essayist, and art and audiovisual media critic.

ERICK GONZÁLEZ LEÓN holds a Degree in Art History. He is Professor at the San Gerónimo College of Havana and a visual arts critic and researcher.

ARTE CONTINUA Rayo 108 entre Zanja y Dragones, Barrio Chino, Centro Habana, Cuba

ARTE CONTINUA is open every day from 10 am to 6 pm. On Wednesday, April the 12th ARTE CONTINUA will remain open until 8 pm.