Sky Project / 2012-14

This exhibition project and artistic creation developed from the design and launching of an international campaign that seeks to involve people of different origin and/or social background in the perception of their environment and of their context by elaborating a special synaesthesia, since it will make the participants aesthetically perceive a fragment of their context that at the same time is patrimony of the world community: the sky

Is it a great representation of the sky in several world countries and continents or the representation of the same common sky? The premise on which the Sky Project is based seems to be structured on the basis of a social interaction created by the artist.

Emerged from a call that was profiting from the social networks platform, the e-mail and other ITC forms, Chuli requested the attendants a photo of the sky they daily see in their place of residence. These photographic images were later transformed and, using the artistic gesture of appropriation, were object of a complex manipulation of their concomitant courses through the painting “interpretation” of new sign structures that approach them more to the reinvention of the “instrumental nostalgia” of individuals…

Ode to Nostalgia / 2011

The artist makes an apology of the construction of “another nature” to which artistic works constantly refer, reconsidering through the contrast between the pieces and their verbal components how the human being has turned artistic reality into something more credible than the objective reality itself, in constant cultural operations that today are over-dimensioned by the media and which launch it to a nostalgic and instrumental structuring of that reality. Its conceptual support is based on some of the famous epistemics put forward by Thomas McEvelly, particularly the one that poses that “the likeness we seem to see between paintings and nature does not result from the fact that art imitates nature, but from the fact that our perception of nature imitates our perception of art.”

This questioning is the central point that philosophically sustains the showcase, using for that purpose the sediments of tachisme, material art, sculpture-painting and the epigonal remains of Ann Hamilton, projecting them with the force and lyricism that have always marked the work of this young artist, very figurative up to the present, and which gives a surprising and interesting turn with this expression.

#cronicassentimentales / 2017-19

This series makes a contemporary representation of works by three artists that influenced my way of seeing and feeling art: Rembrandt van Rijn [Holland, 1606-1669], Vincent van Gogh [Holland, 1853-1890] and Edvard Munch [Norway, 1863-1944]. Said creators, in addition to exerting great influence on my work, have produced an undeniable impact on the collective visual memory of humankind. Starting out from that idea, I use Instagram as social platform that strongly defines a large part of the contemporary visual culture, and the information label #hashtag to find an updated glance focusing on the culture and idiosyncrasy of the represented artist.

With this project I intend to recreate a different vision of contemporary artistic creation in which art follows new roads but feels indebted with the past and tradition. I am likewise interested in glancing at the power of social networks as one of the contemporary media that most vigorously forge and define cultural imageries. Also, starting from the works, I try to establish connections between the system of thought of the present Cuban society and that of other countries, in this case Norway and Holland.

From each of the artists of reference I select the works that most marked me, some better known that others, but equally impacting and complex. The process I have followed consists in finding if a #hashtag of the piece translated into the artist’s native language already exists in Instagram. For example: I chose the work The Descent (1634) by Rembrandt. I established #afdaling as method for the search, which resulted in 516 publications (a number that changes daily), the majority of which are limited to The Netherlands; they gave me information about the presence of these authors in the collective cultural imagery.

Trusting the skill of my trained eye, I discriminate until I select one. Normally I choose the one that, in contrast with the specified piece of art, offers a different perspective or a new angle, generating a relation between the past and its daily reading from the present. Starting from the visual guide of the photograph, I make abstract paintings that combine the out of focus technique (characteristic of photography and audiovisuals) and the expressiveness of the matter. Sometimes they betray the figurative forms from which they start out, but it is the plasticity of my artistic gesture that gains greater relevance. In the paintings I pour my impulses and emotions viscerally for what is object of my attention, which, in a similar way to what my predecessors did, shows my ideas about the contemporary society that is not strange to me: I participate.