By: Artcónica Team
Ernesto Benítez (Open Studio) Collateral/Side Exhibition to XIII Havana Biennial.
After a long time away from the national exhibition scene, Cuban painter, draftsman and installation artist Ernesto Benítez returned to the island to inaugurate the exhibition Ab æternō, in his Open Studio, in the context of international visibility offered by the XIII Havana Biennial.
The gallery space -eventually located in Vedado- has been attended by numerous friends, artists, art critics and curators, interested in re-contacting the creator and assessing the trajectory of his visual production in recent years.
Interviewed by the specialist Claudia Placeres (member of the Artcrónica team), about the circumstances of his return to the country and his specific link to the scene of the Havana Biennial, the artist stated: (…) I can assure you that in these seven years my work, which starts from reflections and explorations around: globalization and biased identity, fragmented memory and hijacked spirituality, as evident dystopian features of this liquid post-individual era, fits perfectly with the argumentative concerns that initially governed the artistic call, even though my presentation has been on the fringes of the official collaterals of this Biennial. However, in relation to the coherence with those assumptions, what I have not yet fully understood is how this new conception of the Biennial could be sustained -in general- under the umbrella of its own slogan: The construction of the possible. I have heard it said that this is a biennial of resistance, a biennial of integration, etc… but the truth is that, in my modest opinion, the final result shows, in the first instance, an evident fragmentation, diverse fractures and disintegration.
Published in the visual arts portal Artcónica.com: https://www.artcronica.com/ac-noticias/xiii-bienal-de-la-habana-ernesto-benitez-inaugura-en-su-open-studio/
