The fragmented, distinctive quality of our reality and the contemporary subject, establishes itself as an identifying sign of the book Ojo con el arte, (An eye on art) by the Cuban critic and curator Nelson Herrera Ysla. It is a heterodox and unusual volume in our cultural bibliography, since its structure does not respond to the common scheme of analyzing a studied object in a unitary character, to explore first its more simple aspects and then penetrate the more complex parts, to exhaustion ¿ or at least try to-. Instead, we are invited to meditate on diverse themes: in chapter one, Cuban visual arts produced at the end of the last century until today, the reopening of the National Museum of Fine Arts, and the Island¿s graphic design, are tackled. Here, fundamental texts and less substantial, but equally valid, texts for understanding our plastic are cited. The second chapter concentrates in the architecture and the ambience of poverty of Havana; during this brief tour of the city of yesterday and today, the author also converses with monumental and environmental Cuban sculpture, which currently leaves much to be desired, given its scarce presence, like its unsuccessful actions. And in the third, Nelson shuffles the polemic between the local and the universal, of strong connotations in the aesthetic-artistic objectivities of Latin America; photography, and the Latin American cultural dynamic in the last years of the 20th century. In the forth chapter he expounds on curatorship and the relation of this young occupation with ethics, not in the abstract, but getting inside the practice in situ: he analyzes the Havana Biennial, of which he is curator, its development and the challenges that it faces for future editions. He journeys through the region and makes deep digressions on the potential that Latin America has to offer universal culture through exhibitions that contribute to dissemination, with solid and profound criteria, our practice and the elimination of the exoticism that is characteristic of numerous exhibitions organized by the hegemonic west to present our creations; afterwards he turns to the international sphere to elucidate on the proliferation of Biennials and to examine the most recent Documenta de Kassel. With mistrust Nelson entwines multiple referents with the purpose of explaining the role that the curator carries out and to emphasize the responsibility that weighs on any self respecting event: more than inviting someone to a «candonga», it should tauten the most controversial notions that gravitate in the art cosmos. To these topics he juxtaposes studies of the poetics of the Cuban artists: Antonio Vidal, Roberto Fabelo, Jorge Caunedo, Uldiz López and Frank Martínez, and the exhibitions: Del centro a la isla (Casa de las Américas), Contemporáneos brasileros and 1 265 kms: Arte de Guatemala (Centro Wifredo Lam) in «De aquí y de allá». The said structure: open, substantial, hybrid, proves to be effective and suggestive to get inside the extensive and intense panorama of the art that surrounds us. Correlated to such a thematic diversity is the contact of published and unedited articles, of profound dissertations on local matters with artistic phenomena that are verified in the universal ambit, of generalizing works with monographs, of autobiographical landscapes loaded with nostalgia and emotion with impartial considerations around the system of art, of historical references with highly debated polemics. All of this is propitious to the renovation of the aura of the clauses included here; meanwhile the new context where they are found re-signifies them. It is important to note that the plurality of aspects referring to the art chiseled in the pages of Ojo¿ is proportional to the sustained and dynamic labor of the author within our cultural panorama. With the greatest respect, we could distinguish him as «musician, poet and madman», and it is in the professional performance that Nelson possesses dissimila...