Ground Floor / Ray Ellen and Allan Yarkin Gallery
The first solo museum presentation for Cuban-born, Puerto Rico-based artist Dalton Gata (b. 1977, Santiago de Cuba) features his surrealistic installations across media, which explore his personal experiences, queer and popular culture, and psychological and mythical symbols. The artist’s recent focus on metaphysical still-lifes is reflected through newly commissioned paintings and sculpture that depict symbolic elements in human scale, such as monsters, masks, and a pearl that doubles as an 8-ball.
Trained as a fashion designer, Gata reimagines craft to consider its relationship to identity and sexuality, creating innovative works across mediums. Gata’s work draws from an expansive and deeply personal archive of images assembled by the artist over the past five years, including a trove of digital sources. His practice is also profoundly impacted by his experience of immigration, and explores the diasporic conditions of Cuba in the Caribbean through symbolic landscapes and the incorporation of cross-cultural references.
The multidisciplinary artist’s work is represented in ICA Miami’s collection and his recent exhibitions include “Diálogos Remotos,” Peres Projects, Berlin (2020); “Swimming on Asphalt While Dreaming of the Sea,” Art Basel Miami Beach, with Galería Agustina Ferreyra (2019); “The Devil Sees Beauty In A Pair Of Horns, Four Claws, And A Tail,” Chapter NY (2019); “The Gaze is Downstairs,” The Sunday Painter, London (2019); “It Ain’t Necessarily So,” Galería Agustina Ferreyra, Mexico City (2019) and “La Casa de Dalton,” Embajada Gallery, San Juan (2018). Gata also designed and produced two fashion collections before focusing full-time on his art practice. He holds a BFA in Fashion Design from the Altos del Chavón Design School in Santo Domingo.
The exhibition will be accompanied by the artist’s first catalogue, published by ICA Miami. It will feature essays by Maria Elena Ortiz and Rita Indiana, and an interview by Alex Gartenfeld, among other contributions.
This exhibition is organized by ICA Miami and curated by Alex Gartenfeld, Artistic Director.
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