[NYTr] Old Fridges Turned into Artworks by Cuban Artists
 
Date: Sat, 11 Aug 2007 15:00:32 -0500 (CDT)


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Old Fridges Turned into Artworks by Cuban Artists

Havana, Aug 10 (acn) A group of Cuban artists turned old and obsolete 
refrigerators into art pieces making up an exhibit entitled Energy 
Guzzling Monsters that was recently on display at Paris' Grand Palais.

Some 50 high-energy consuming fridges, most of them built in the 
1950's, were transformed by an equal number of Cuban artists into 
sculptures. These refrigerators are some of the obsolete appliances 
that are being replaced throughout Cuba as part of the country's 
ongoing Energy Revolution.

Promoted by curator Mario "Mayito" M. Gonzalez, the exhibit was first 
showed during this year's Havana Biennial before moving on to the 
Bovisa Triennial in Milan; La Casa de America, in Madrid; and finally, 
the Gran Palais in Paris.

Mayito told the press about the origin of the initiative, "We were 
working on another project in my studio and one of the artists, Roberto 
Favelo, began to paint a fridge I had there. I thought it was a good 
idea."

Both critics and the public of the French capital were mesmerized by 
the refrigerators: "unusual, tender, full of humor, nostalgic, daring 
or disturbing," the AFP news agency wrote after registering the 
reactions of visitors to the exhibition, who called it "a resounding 
demonstration of the vitality of Cuban contemporary art."

Jules Grossard, an expert in Latin American art, said that Energy 
Guzzling Monsters is "a metaphor of the overflowing imagination of a 
society that faces the challenges of existence with joy."

 From the pages of Le Monde, Francis Marmande described the collection 
as "stimulating, sensually aggressive and extremely Cuban."

The exhibition of old refrigerators symbolizes what has been a very 
exciting period in Cuban visual arts, gathering several generations of 
avant-garde artists and moving beyond the borders separating painting, 
sculpture, scenography and the "ready made" or "object trouvC)," so dear 
to European vanguard artists between the twentieth century wars.

Some artists focused on the rectangular dimensions of the fridge as a 
means to develop their creative work. For example, Zaida del RC-o, 
Agustin Bejarano and Ernesto Garcia PeC1a filled doors with their 
expressive painting style, while Javier Guerra displayed the 
magnificent drawings he regularly makes for the covers of imaginary 
magazines. Others went beyond the medium, to turn the fridge into a 
starting point for new three-dimensional fantasies, such as the stool 
conceived by Nelson DomC-nguez, the refrigerator beer can by Miguel A. 
Leyva, the re-invented light box by Rene PeC1a and Kcho?s 
refrigerator-raft.

Mayito's piece featured the fridge at the heart of a fragment of 
Havana's seaside Malecon.  This same identity seal, at an iconographic 
level, can be seen in the hybrid Luis E. Camejo made between a 
refrigerator and an almendron (1940s or 1950s American car).

 
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