From March 7 through April 13th, 2013.
Gustavo Acosta | THERE: Postcards from Havana
THERE: Postcards from Havana is a historical survey of works done throughout the artist’s career based on the city of Havana. Acosta depicts views of the city in which its unique profile emerges like snapshot seen through the filters of time. The series of works represents the artist’s intent to connect the past and present of this iconic city, which was his home.
Postcards were historically used as a quick communication or to send greetings to those back home from a romanticized destination, which the sender was visiting. Unfortunately, the widespread use of internet has rendered such modes of communication practically obsolete, thus postcards have become more of a relic of the past and an oddity to be collected. Acosta uses this transition as a way of reinforcing a connection with the past. Formally he uses “technical resources” such as colors similar to those used in old times to hand-color postcards. The series can also be associated with memories and dreams, that fleeting time between dusk and dawn when a city sleeps.
The piece Memory Lane, best represents these concepts as it illustrates the artist taking a mental trip to the past, to the Havana that he left more than 20 years ago.
This exhibition is in a way a counterpart to his last solo show in 2011 titled Here, in which he painted views of Miami, the city where he lives now. While Here is a recording of his current place, There becomes a recorded view of the past.
Carlos Gonzalez | Natural Mechanic
In his new body of work, Carlos Gonzalez continues to explore the parallels between man and nature. Gonzalez mimics the mechanisms created by nature to transport seeds from a place to another. In the piece, Tumbler he illustrates how seeds are dispersed by the wind, expanding a plant’s territory and its chances for survival. In another piece, Release, Gonzalez explores the way plants “explode” and send the seeds out.
Carlos Gonzalez is interested in uncommon traits in the natural world, like the “walking plants” representing the resilience and mutability of nature. Walking Slowly, an imposing metal sculpture is inspired by a palm tree that grows in the rainforest of Central and South America, (Socrate aexorrhiza).
This is the second time that the gallery have brought these two artists together as an interesting dialogue is created between one artist’s obsession with the nature of a city and the other’s obsession with nature surviving in spite of man and his cities.
Pan American Art Projects
2450 NW 2nd Avenue
Miami, FL 33127
305-573-2400
www.panamericanart.com
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