Code Art Fair

Agosto 30 — Septiembre 2 / 2018.

Servando art gallery is pleased to present a group of three Cuban artists whose works dialogue with each other´s around a specific topic: the notion of “space”. The creators are Osvaldo González, Ángel R.Ricardo Ríos and José Miguel Costa; in each case, the approach to such topic occurs in a very peculiar and diverse way.

The work of OSVALDO GONZÁLEZ (Cuba, 1982) develops between installation, intervention and painting, always exploring this space thematic and the objects associated to it.

The artist, taking materials of trash aspect like cardboard and adhesive tape, complemented by the use of artificial lights, interprets or intervenes places that belong to his domestic environment, to his workplace or other locations, with which he establishes an affective relationship.

When facing the work space Osvaldo González, during the intervention process, tries to turn it into an extension of his environment, he subtly eliminates the historicity of the real objects at the same time that he adds another narratives. Nevertheless, there are always fragments of reality in the new realities and it´s in that relationship point where the space and the object lose their autonomy, which gets to be configured only from art

In his most recent production, and as a result of a synthesis process, Osvaldo González creates light screens in a two-dimensional format, with which he generates new and very attractive visual effects. His proposal for the fair consists of a 6 screens set, corresponding to the series Memory spaces. Besides there is a site specific, an installation of great format and spectacular aspect, that can be visualized at the entrance of the fair.

On the other hand, ÁNGEL R. RICARDO RÍOS (Cuba, 1965) takes us to a space dominated by nature, and set us before an extraordinary visual experience determined by the apotheosis of color, the excess and the liberation of gesture.

In his painting there are no rules nor stereotypes. Each work is kind of wild surface in which forms seem to expand and overflow the limits of the canvas. Between figurative and abstraction, we recognize floral motives that become pretext just to mention another of his essential topics: the sensual and erotic. As a result, his pieces also point to the exuberance of the wild and free natural space.

For Code Art Fair we propose a group of paintings corresponding to the Blue Tomatoes series. These are medium format paintings, which is a completely new characteristic in his work (so much given to the big dimensions) and he shows it for the first time especially in this occasion.

Lastly, in dialogue with the two previous artists, we exhibit the work of JOSÉ MIGUEL COSTA (Cuba, 1971), which makes reference to the cybernetic or virtual space. It´s a set of 5 conceptual drawings, corresponding to the Trojans series. Each one constitutes a kind of social portrait or collective landscape, when depicting hundred of mail addresses and web pages of actual internet sites, out of diverse sectors of information. The idea of the world that hides behind each one of these addresses stands out, as long as each symbol, at the same time that contains an identity, also owns an infinite universe of information.

These are pieces that, starting from a simple act as it is writing, tackle a complex phenomenon: the individual’s identity and its collective extension. The artist faces such phenomenon parting from a primary idea, from the tradition that is the writing. At formal level, each piece connects with abstraction, and in a symbolic way it tries to recreate the social rhizome that the Net generates, seeing it like a huge organized city. Next to such drawings we´ll also present a couple of sculptures from the artist’s more recent creation.