The Great Flight (Exitus-Reditus)
2005
Bandages, ashes, charcoal and plastered clay
185 x 170 x 25 cm. (Installation of variable dimensions)
Work conceived for Specific Space (Site Specific Installation Art) that was shown for the first time at the Personal Exhibition “Exitus-Reditus, Cartography of the Self”, Servando Gallery (Genesis Art Galleries), Havana.
Existence and Transcendence: Fundamentals of Magical Flight
Installative sculptural piece conceived from a human figure suspended from the ceiling in the action of flying over the spectator. It is a human figure emptied directly from the artist’s own body by means of a bandaging process amalgamated with a mixture of plastered clay and resin. For his production, the author has created a procedure inspired by Egyptian mummification that refers to the double symbolic meaning that the bandages acquire in their hieroglyphic system, where they allude as much to the first wrapping with which the newborn is received as to the shroud with which the deceased is deposited in his final dwelling.
In the casting process that the artist follows to produce “The Great Flight” and other works like it, he only uses the negative mold that he extracts from his own body. In other words, “The Great Flight” only exhibits a subtle physical – external – resemblance to the model (which is the author himself), since the detailed copy of his body (which retains epithelials, hair and fluids transferred during the process) is -hidden from the viewer’s gaze- inside the work.