LEYVA NOVO: DUST IT IS AND TO DUST IT WILL TURN
Intricate between action and register, El Apartamento hosts Algo deja quien se va, the first solo exhibition in Spain by Reynier Leyva Novo (Havana, Cuba, 1983). Starting from the political concept of historical memory and linking it to the issues of power and colonialism, the artist unfolds in two well-differentiated series his proposal to approach these lines, and extends his networks to the impact (or influence) they have on the institutional and cultural fabric.
Both series, Global Active Dust Collection Center and El susurro de Mnemosine can find a common point in that omnipresent concern of a postcolonialism that vertebrates artistic practice. Specifically, the history of Spain and his native Cuba allow Reynier Leyva Novo to enter known fields and use them not only as a stage for the memory he alludes to, but also as a reminder and record of a present that maintains its essence in the everydayness of the public space.
The action behind the Global Active Dust Collection Center is not new. Initiated by the artist in Washington, the Cuban artist tests in a second city the search and discovery of the essence and contextual meaning in the memory of architecture, urbanism and the development of the city itself. All of them are witnesses of the different looks, inert beings that, nevertheless, hide in them and in their surroundings, semiotics of power and decadence.
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Reynier Leyva Novo. Algo deja quien se va. Foto: Álvaro de Benito
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Reynier Leyva Novo. Algo deja quien se va. Foto: Álvaro de Benito
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Reynier Leyva Novo. Algo deja quien se va. Foto: Álvaro de Benito
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Reynier Leyva Novo. Algo deja quien se va. Foto: Álvaro de Benito
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Reynier Leyva Novo. Algo deja quien se va. Foto: Álvaro de Benito
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Reynier Leyva Novo. Algo deja quien se va. Foto: Álvaro de Benito
In a performative action, Leyva Novo will sublimate that essence by collecting on adhesive tapes the remains that make up the pavement of these landmarks in the historical metropolis, which will make everything that exists around them take on an essence of its own as a real record. The result is astonishing for its pictorial quality, a sample of random harmony of living elements that maintain, like the processes, their calendar. Leaves, ribbons, grasses and everyday elements are the protagonists of memory and of a present that, captured in the moment, will also tend to get lost organically in its fragility.
On the other hand, the exhibition presents El susurro de Mnemosine, a second series that connects and is linked to the Global Active Dust Collection Center for its research on that Cuban colonial memory, but which claims its full aesthetic independence. In it, the artist represents some of the best-known or significant memorials that raise the memory of the episodes of struggle, incorporating the factor of the hero, full symbolism to address, from that point, a certain criticism that affects more on the symbolic and almost museistic of those figures. From there, he will duplicate the work to bury them under opaque layers of paint and that will only acquire institutional sense when their peers are revealed with conservation and restoration techniques.
Reynier Leyva Novo: Algo deja quien se va can be seen until May 1 at El Apartamento (Madrid headquarters9, Puebla, 4, Madrid (Spain).
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