THE CARPENTERS, THE END OF A CHAPTER
After almost three decades of experience and international recognition, the most important collective of the Cuban scene dissolves. Los Carpinteros (The Carpenters) integrated by Marco Antonio Castillo and Dagoberto Rodriguez announced their separation.
Twenty-eight years ago, the Berlin wall was barely falling and the end of the cold war was beginning a new chapter, in the city of Havana Alexandre Arrechea, Dagoberto Rodríguez and Marco Antonio Castillo founded Los Carpinteros, one of the most important collectives for the contemporary Cuban art. However, in 2003 Arrechea would break off to forge an individual career -successful, by the way-, thus leaving the duo that today is associated with the name of the collective. From that moment, Rodriguez and Castillo began a prolific and remarkable career.
Although Castillo has communicated firmly that the collective will no longer exist, the Cuban artist declared that both the works that have not yet been completed and the projected exhibitions -and that have not yet been carried out- under the name of the collective will be carried out . "However, in addition to these works that were left uninformed, in the future there will be no more works signed by Los Carpinteros", Castillo explained in the statement.
This group of artists, who claimed the name of "carpenters" for the use of recycled wood in their early works, has pieces of their work in really important collections – both, public and private - around the world: Center Georges Pompidou (Paris, France ), Guggenheim Museum (New York, USA), Tate Modern (London, United Kingdom) and ARCO Foundation (Santiago de Compostela, Spain), just to mention a few.
The dissolution of the collective, without a doubt, is cause for surprise in the international art scene, but it is also a wake-up call: the separation of these two great artists will become, predictably, a reinvention of both artists.
