By Artcónica Team
Ernesto Benitez opens in his Open Studio
After a long period of time away from the national exhibition scene, Cuban painter, draftsman and installation artist Ernesto Benitez returned to the island to inaugurate the exhibition Ab æternō, in his Open Studio, taking advantage of the international visibility context offered by the XIII Havana Biennial.
Numerous friends, artists, art critics and curators have attended the space -eventually located in the Vedado- interested in reconnecting with the creator and assessing the trajectory of his visual production in recent years.
Interviewed by specialist Claudia Placeres (member of the Artcronica team) about the circumstances of his return to the country and his specific connection with the Havana Biennial, the artist said: (…) I could assure you that in these seven years my work, which is based on reflections and explorations around: globalization and skewed identity, fragmented memory and kidnapped spirituality, as evident dystopian features of this liquid era of the post-individual, fits in perfectly with the argumentative concerns that initially governed the artistic call, even though my presentation has been on the sidelines of the official collaterals of this Biennial. However, in relation to the coherence with those assumptions, what I have not yet been able to fully understand is how this new conception of the Biennial itself could be sustained -in a general way- 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