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Dot Fiftyone Gallery is pleased to present“On the Altars of Vanity,”the first exhibition of artists Grethell Rasúa and Harold García V at the gallery. The show will be on view from March 29 to April 30, 2019.
“On the Altars of Vanity”emphasizes an art that moves in the "post-utopian" areas, between ideological masks and real questions, between perversion and experiences, between illusion and critical disenchantment. Not only that, but it highlights contamination and hybridization as the basis for the construction of a new subjectivity. The artists propose a research related to the experiences of Garcia in Miami and Rasúa in Cuba, addressing themes both of the capitalist, neoliberal and the communist realm.
The interest is not towards the affirmation of the great narratives, but for the exploration of the minimum stories that intend to bridge the growing gap between the official discourse, imbued with slogans and propaganda, and ordinary life. It is an open approach to the accumulated experiences, paradoxes of current events, and vanity manifestations nowadays.
Grethell Rasúa focuses on working with the sense of taste, with the ability or with the way people have for appreciating the beauty or the ugliness of things, broadly defined. Taste, being a cultural, but at the same, subjective construct, in which the individual imagination intervenes, gives her the possibility to use it as a resource to create works that contain attitudes, data, and shapes of specific lives, that bear witness to a social and cultural moment. In order to create these pieces, she researches the culture where she lives. Rasúa analyzes how taste is understood within its social body and the reasons, considering the appearance of things, for the individual and collective assessments and desires of its inhabitants.
Harold García V, usually works with the concept of integrity and its consequences at a sociocultural level. He understands integrity as an ethical and moral value, which must be respected. He takes it on as a tool, figuratively speaking, with which he measures and record behaviors, situations, and deeds. García V understands and points out the absence of values, which in the interest of self-enrichment abandons all logic and respect for global well-being. His works are evolving pieces of anthropological and sociological character.
Grethell Rasúa, (b. 1983, Havana, Cuba), graduated with honors from San Alejandro National Academy of Fine Arts (2004), as well as from the University of the Arts, ISA (2009). She attended The Behavior Art School (2005-07), founded and directed by Tania Bruguera. In 2009, she completed a certificate program in Liberal Arts, Public School of Cuba, University of Veracruz. She worked as an expert on visual arts and as a curator at the Center for the Development of Visual Arts-CDVA (2009-2012). She was a professor at the Academy, conducting workshops on Thesis and Art Critique (2013-2017). She currently works and lives in Miami.
Harold García V, (b. 1985, Havana, Cuba), graduated in 2004 from the National Academy of Fine Arts ‘San Alejandro’, Havana, Cuba. He currently works and lives in Miami. Solo shows (selection): 2017: “Mediadores que marcan experiencias" (Cuba Edition), in collaboration with the 7th Salon of Contemporary Cuban Art"Un ensayo de colaboración", (CDAV), Havana, Cuba.2016 :“Living with the past”, Gallery Haaaauch-quer, Klagenfurt, Austria.2005: “Miami Beach Cinematheque”, Miami Beach, United States. Group shows (selection):2017: “Mala Yerba, Fotografía Cubana Contemporánea”. ISOLO17 Gallery, Verona, Italy.2016: “Presentation of artists in residence”, (artist guest). KulturKontakt, Concordiaplatz, Viena, Austria. “Art-Xiomas, Cuba Ahora: The Next Generation”. OAS AMA, Art Museum of the Americas, Washington DC, Estados Unidos.2003: “Mirando y dejando”. Hernandez Cárdenas Gallery, Havana, Cuba.
Workshop: “Mediators Marking Experiences”, KulturKontakt Studio Gredlerstraße Wien, Austria in 2016.
