GROUP SHOW
High pressures
Date
July 19 – 31, 2011
Artists
Aluan Argüelles, Naivy Pérez, Rewell Altunaga, Susana Pilar Delahante, and Víctor Alexis Puig.
Curated by
Rewell Altunaga
Gallery
23 y 12 Gallery
Location
Havana, Cuba
Curatorial Statement
Perpetual Pressures*
Nowhere do I see a God of life,
I only see blind people adorning their crimes with God.
—Elías Canetti
The wave is sun
Living within us
The particle
—Oscar Rodríguez Pérez
How will we be able to look at you, how will we be able to stand on your skin? We have understood that your face turns to dust and your body vanishes in avalanches of time that still seek life. We all know the only mortal; we know that when we are no longer here, you will have died. But in you, as an eternal creature, we will live forever.
We also had good times; then we were romantic. Our soul flirted with your body, and we ran sincerely through the avenues in the light of some revolution that we have now forgotten. Beside us, the good and the wise taught us to grow. With joy and ingenuity, we won the conflagration, in the dim light of some dream, thanks to you.
Then we felt the imminent miracle of how your scrutinizing host’s gaze silently enveloped us. And before that chilling glory that tears often fade away, our hasty hearts ceased to sing, with that style of soldiers or eternal archangels, and froze before your glorious arrogance.
But we became saturated with the siege that turned us into a promiscuous crowd, also with those who did not shed tears and in their dryness summoned us to flee from your land. Those who desecrated your laments and turned them into terrible stridency. The fraudulent applause that stunned us and made us forget the meaning of the word love.
Emotions faded after that pandemonium, except for the skeptical, the nihilistic, and the ironic. Today, as the mountains bend and no foreign sky protects us, a shadow passes and prophesies your fall, the burial of an era that only madness can demolish.
When there is barely anything left, other than the suburbs of discord, centuries will pass before our eyes in a great battle, like a tingling sensation under your feet. We will rise as witnesses of a common destiny, survivors of this time, of this place. And there we will be, until the end of the saga.
—Rewell Altunaga
____________
* This text was inspired by the works from the exhibition “Altas presiones”: “Hello Darwin” and “Sin Rumbo” by Victor Alexis Puig, “Sueño sin nombre” by Susana Pilar Delahante, “Punto de no retorno” by Naivy Pérez, “Wall Street” by Aluan Argüelles, and “Die Erwartung,” my own work.