artnexus #81

The work of some contemporary Cuban artists offers a unique perspective on the operations of everyday life. Adopting a critical posture, they detect and unveil the contradictions and ambiguities found in their social space. What is unique to their works is their ability to escape their context and, while retaining it as a point of reference, achieve reflections that transcend the local. Such is the case of the Capote brothers, Iván (1973) and Yoán (1977). Since the days of their participation in the DUPP project (Desde una pragmática pedagógica), headed by the artist and ISA professor René Francisco Rodríguez, their works have dealt with the blurring of borders in the contemporary world. And while there are conceptual coincidences between them, each brother maintains an autonomous poetic and an individuality all of his own. Simplifying forms and resources, Iván inhabits a rational world that moves viewers to reflection. His sober designs and his use of geometry and movement help ensure that nothing remains static, that everything—as in the contemporary world itself—flows and changes. His exploration of materials and his concept of the art object put one in mind of figures such as Joseph Beuys. Yoán maintains that his work has been “the result on an analysis of the objects and their relation to our bodies; studying their interface, representation, and physical or sensorial potential. My work process emerges from different physical, psychological, and social states of the individual, applied to or incorporated into the cold environment of urban materials and standardized objects with which we live.” (*) His particular way of understanding the sculptural quality that can be discovered in common objects brings Duchamp to mind. The work on our cover is by Yoán Capote and is titled Open Mind (2008). 
IVONNE PINI