Descripción de la Exposición
guerrero-projects is pleased to announce the solo exhibition of Cuban artist Carlos Garaicoa in Houston. The artists’ work focuses on the City, an organism that thinks for and perpetuates itself. Through two bodies of work, Garaicoa presents these ideas through an exploration of ceramic and photographic diptychs as well as hand-cut diagrams on light boxes. The diptychs, inspired by photographs taken in Madrid, Spain, contain writings that appear, in a way, to be revealed. Through sculptural representation they appear to be reconstructed by Garaicoa who pursues, as if he were a researcher, the progress of architecture and politics. Tracing the tension between architecture and archaeology, this series of works presents a look up to that writing.
When we picture an architect-- as the agent that creates the skylines of the cities-- we think of measuring instruments, intricate blueprints, construction plans, and a trained drawing style. Such images are invoked by Garaicoa in his light boxes and paper-cutting mats as a way to reveal the scriptural nature of cities-- not just of their architecture, but a morphology of order and organization as if, over the same drawings, our ideologies were constructed too. For viewers that pass through the gallery setting, 6 life-sized diptychs of the series Cerámicas Porno-Indignadas engulf the space, allowing the viewer to imagine themselves standing in the middle of the city, looking up at the graffiti-marked walls of the old pharmacy mosaics that still exist in some Spanish neighborhoods. The photography serves as irony related to specific events of recent political history in Spain. Garaicoa then meticulously reproduced these photographs in ceramic, but also reproduces a written discontent not legible as words, but as the language of the city-- the language that still survives in the streets-- the ruins of our contemporary society.
Carlos Garaicoa (Havana, 1967) divides his time between Havana and Madrid. His work has been exhibited in many solo and group shows, at Art in General and at the MOMA of New York, the Luis Angel Arango Library in Bogotá, the Nasjonalmuseet in Oslo, the Museo de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid and the Liverpool Tate. He participated in the 18th Biennale of Sydney, the 5th, 6th, 7th and 11th Havana Biennial, the 12th Fellbach Triennale in Germany, the 1st Johannesburg Biennale, the 17th Biennial, Arte de Paiz, in Guatemala, the 8th Shanghai Biennale in China, the 24th, 26th and 28th São Paulo Biennial in Brazil, Documenta XI in Germany, the 1st Yokohama Triennale in Japan and the Venice Biennale in 2005 and 2009. Works by Garaicoa are held in many private and public collections, including the Museum of Modern Art and the Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris, the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto, the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes in Havana and Tate Modern in London. He won the 39th International Contemporary Art Prize of Montecarlo and the Katherine S. Marmor Award, Los Angeles M.O.C.A, both in 2005.
Exposición. 19 nov de 2024 - 02 mar de 2025 / Museo Nacional del Prado / Madrid, España
Formación. 23 nov de 2024 - 29 nov de 2024 / Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía (MNCARS) / Madrid, España
