Pain is The Life, 2000-2005
installation and sculptural works and Body Art with materials derived from fire and its action (ashes, coal) salt, sulfur, clay, copper, iron, steel, wood, among others.
These and other works are shown as a personal exhibition at Luz y Oficios Gallery (Provincial Center of Plastic Arts and Design), Havana. They are shown simultaneously with the personal exhibition (To Tear the Vail of the Arcane) that Ernesto Benítez also proposes as part of his graduation thesis at the Higher Institute of Art (University of the Arts) in Havana.
Analogical Thought, Art and Life Story
This is an exhibition that moves in the coordinates of Art and Life Story and its central reflection pivots on an idea that José Martí exposed and developed in “Prologue to Poema del Niágara” “The conventions created deform the true existence…“.
Well, starting from apathy and laziness due to the loss of confidence in the projects of social transformation that are installed in Western culture after the collapse of modern paradigms, and going through consumerist narcissism, light mentality and the philosophical volatility, the works that make up this exhibition call attention and insist that it is not possible to live on the fringes of meaning and that “it is up to each man -as Martí reminds- to reconstruct The True Existence“.
Man is not a firm and lasting product; neither is he a “narrow and dangerous bridge between nature and spirit” (Herman Hesse, The Steppe Wolf) because he is not a dual entity. In this sense, this exhibition, whose sculptural-installation and ephemeral works (through symbols perfectly recognizable within the framework of Western tradition), aim to urge us to turn our eyes towards the horizon, stimulating analogical thought and vindicating utopia.