Ariel Cabrera

Ariel Cabrera - VINTAGE BOUTIQUE N.2

Biografía del Artista: Ariel Cabrera (Cuba, 1982) appropriates historical painting and its long tradition to recreate a type of imaginary in which the rigor of the document is subject to the fluidity of life and its traps. If we look closely, we will understand that behind his combination of episodes related to the interwar period (1879-1895) and the Cuban War of Independence (1895-1898); the aesthetics of “La Belle Epoque”; the heroes and heroines; the Cuban Mambises and the fearsome Rough Riders, there is hidden a visceral dissatisfaction with the documentary and the historical. That is why the artist decides to delve into gruesome scenes and aspects little touched upon by Cuban historiography. Two details must be taken into special consideration: Ariel Cabrera bases his images on in-depth research, through which he approaches and handles archive documents with heritage value; His painting is connected to photography, specifically to the aesthetics of the beginning of photography in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when it was still closely connected to painting. At the beginning of his career as an art student, Cabrera Montejo had the experience of being in constant interaction with collectible objects, works of art and documents related to the compilation of historical memories of Cuba. These documents transcended him as a rare and truthful testimony, and provided him with valuable information. This differed in many aspects from the official account by the State of the struggle for independence undertaken by Cuban patriots in the second half of the 19th century. This is when the motivation to subject history to a review in the realms of art arose in him. Assuming academic painting techniques to address this aesthetic assumption, contaminated with totally contemporary resources and images, is a way of desacralizing the narrative and vindicating painting as an exercise in historical recording and archiving. Ariel graduated from the Instituto Superior de Arte in 2004. He has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions, including: New Works, Galleria Mazzoli, Modena, Italy; Escenas Secundarias, GE Galería, Monterrey, Mexico; Kindred Spirits, Ten Artist by the Hudson, Coral Gables Museum, Miami, USA; Cubans: Post-truth, Pleasure and Paint, Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art (SECCA), Winston, USA; All that you have is your Soul, Factionart projects, Coates and Scarry Gallery, London/Los Angeles/New York; Good the Last Drop, Artium Gallery, Miami, USA; Emerging to Established, The Krause Gallery, New York, USA; Resilencias. La otra Cuba, Art District, Minnesota, USA; and Cachita, The Infinite Lightness of Being, The Olga M. Saladrigas Gallery, Miami, USA. She has also collaborated with the New York Academy of Art, in Manhattan, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art (MET), in New York, USA. She is part of important collections such as the Pérez Art Museum (PAMM), Miami; the Beth Rudin DeWoody, New York; the Collezione Maramotti, Reggio Emilia; The Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art (SECCA), North Carolina; the United Stated Embassy Madrid Art Collection, Madrid; the Massimo Bottura Collection, Modena; and the Jorge Pérez Collection, Miami.