From the sea and life, genesis and apocalypse at the Esquerré Gallery (+photos)
Twenty-three pieces produced from 2002 to this year make up Balseiro’s striking visual proposal, in which the sea becomes the protagonist to talk to us about the experiential and to raise concerns about human existence, about what is truly important.
Genesis-apocalypse, the antithesis, the antagonistic, life and death, hope and the end. These are the premises that somehow govern the exhibition of Juan Carlos Perez Balseiro inaugurated on Tuesday at the Pedro Esquerre provincial gallery in the city of Matanzas.
According to specialists Vilma Roque and Yamila Gordillo, curators of the exhibition, Balseiro proposes, with his creative universe and from a critical and sensitive perspective, to face the reconstruction of personal destinies and collective histories, with an unusual dialogue between mixtures and transgressions of the senses.
Twenty-three pieces produced from 2002 to this year make up Balseiro’s striking visual proposal, in which the sea becomes the protagonist to speak to us of the experiential and to confront us with concerns about human existence, about what is truly important.
Juan Carlos’ creative process is also sui generis. He starts from the construction of a real scenario under the sea and its visual documentation to then transmute that landscape into drawing, painting, sculpture.
Titles such as Marea, Mar de lágrimas, Prefiero hundirme en el mar, La última cena, El Gramblanco and El bohío make up this selection of pieces in which the immensity of the sea covers everything, even sometimes our hopes.
Precisely, El bohío won the award in the video art category at the Gibara Poor Film Festival, a work that for Margarita Gonzalez Llorente, curator of Universal Contemporary Art at the National Museum of Fine Arts, has a high symbolic and patriotic value.
The area of the sculptures, González Llorente values, shows us the imagination of the artist, summoning to make dissimilar objects with which the spectator is invited to think about his objectives in life, dreams and aspirations.
A variety of techniques, ranging from drawing, painting, sculpture and video art, and a diversity of themes serve as a letter of introduction to Genesis-Apocalypse; however, from the title itself, there is a correspondence, a uniformity in the exhibition that increases its value from the conceptual and artistic point of view.
According to the specialist, the exhibition presents very atypical faces, composed of shark jaws, without eyes, without mouths. Another part of the exhibition shares this area, with more color, such as Mar de espinas (Sea of Thorns), a duet with Ernesto Rancaño.
Juan Carlos Perez Balseiro studied at the Provincial School of Plastic Arts of Matanzas and later at the National School of Art. He is a member of UNEAC and founder of the Martha Machado Brigade, created by the plastic artist Alexis Leyva Machado, Kcho.
Written by Jessica Mesa.
