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By Leah Ollman, Special to The Times
April 4, 2008
Before
the art market developed a voracious appetite for the lead-free
cultural exports of China, it hungered for hard-won output from
politically insular, aesthetically sophisticated Cuba. Just a
decade ago, Cuban artists were the darlings of the art world and
the focus of countless museum and gallery exhibitions. Although
they are no longer the flavor of the moment, they may become so
again if new leadership in our country and theirs betters the
conditions of access and exchange.
The Couturier Gallery
has consistently championed Cuban artists, including Carlos Estévez,
now featured in his fifth solo show there. Estévez's visual
vocabulary draws from charts and diagrams, early 20th century
French artist Francis Picabia and his own, slightly older Cuban
colleague, José Bedia, who, like Estévez, now lives in Miami. He
draws and paints with an ideographic clarity delightfully out of
sync with the elusive nature of his themes: a sense of place and
belonging; secrets, imaginings, dreams and other concealed
workings of the mind.
In one of his paintings, the human heart doubles as an island with
a walled city within and a bevy of boats nuzzling its shore. In a
crisply delineated, wonderfully wry drawing, two figures converse
on old-fashioned telephones that constitute their bodies: They
are, literally, mobile phones.
Estévez's style can feel repetitive at times, but when he's
pursuing an acute concept, and especially when he's working in
pencil and watercolor, his imagery is rich in metaphor and graced
with humor.
Couturier Gallery,
166 N. La Brea Ave., (323) 933-5557, through April 26. Closed
Sundays and Mondays. www.couturiergallery.com.
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