December 2019 – YAOH AG – Yet Another Old Holding

Yailen Sellén (Cienfuegos, *1987) graduated in Plastic Arts from the Provincial School of Art Instructors “Octavio García”, of Cienfuegos, in 2006. In 2014 she graduated in Social Communication. In the University “Carlos Rafael Rodríguez” of that city.
She has made two personal exhibitions in her hometown and has participated in more than a dozen collective shows in Cuba and Venezuela.

Her works are part of private collections in Cuba and the United States.

There is in many of Yailén Sellén’s engravings an almost childish candor, which evokes the illustrations of children’s storybooks. Some, in fact, very well that could be used for that purpose. The diafanity of the approach, the harmony of the lines, the apparent innocence of the themes consolidate a poetic that avoids, with all intent, arduous conflicts.

In her series, even in the most dramatic ones, the artist seems to celebrate the beauty of life, embodied in moments of calm and contemplation. It is notable in his engravings on affective animals. Or in religious scenes. Or in studies about birds. Nothing disturbs the calm of the moment recreated.

In other pieces, a thorough study on the plasticity of the sea and its waves is evident. But even when the waves are particularly violent, the balance of the scene is disturbed. Yailén Sellén usually introduces strangers, figures and elements that poetize, that suggest stories. The viewer could build his own story.

Pending the details, the preciousness of the “drawing”, Sellén seeks to consolidate a style that is, first of all, a sensitivity. His is a lyricism that gets empathy, that stimulates the imagination, that revives nostalgia.

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Alejandro Gómez Cangas (Villa Clara, 1986) graduated from the "Leopoldo Romañach" Professional Academy of Santa Clara (2005). He later studied at the University of the Arts, ISA, from which he graduated in the painting profile in 2012. He works and lives in Havana, Cuba.

He has made almost a dozen personal exhibitions in Cuba, Peru and Lebanon. He has participated in collective exhibitions in Cuba, Denmark, Italy, Panama, Germany, Switzerland and Lebanon. His works are part of private collections in Cuba, the United States, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, Peru, Brazil, Peru, Great Britain, Spain, France, Italy, Denmark, Switzerland, Belgium and Lebanon.

A crowd is not a homogeneous mass, as some politicians and economists might think. A crowd – Alejandro Gómez Cangas knows it well – is the confluence of characters, points of view, visuals, backgrounds and dissimilar aspirations, which form a more or less functional, more or less harmonious framework … depending on the call.

The spectator can discover in the works of Gómez Cangas portraits of “real” men and women, because the models that the artist recreates walk the streets, follow their routines, make their lives … The creator photographs them to insert them later, through painting , in new contexts.

Alejandro Gómez Cangas – La Promesa – Coache on Concrete – 25 x 30 cm

Gómez Cangas’s series have sociological, philosophical, psychological implications … as a good part of art, obviously. But here there is an emphasis on a vision that transcends the mere aesthetic vocation: by locating his characters (and himself, sometimes, he is part of the group) in compositions of marked symbolism, which can touch the estrangement, the artist reflects on themes of pressing news: What “moves” the crowds? How do they “move”? Why do they “move”?

But Gomez Cangas, more than the group, seems to be interested in the individual in the group. That is why he insists on identity marks; in what distinguishes, rather than in what circumstantially unifies.