Isla (in memoriam)

2007
Oil, fish-hooks, nails and artist's blood on panel of plywood
136.5 x 258.5 x 7 cm each

These works are inspired in the experience of seduction, desire and obsession; like constant expressions of our body and its human nature in contemporary society. Specifically, this work, entitled Isla, reproduces the image of the sea using around 100 000 fish-hooks like a metaphorical and dramatic visual presence. This piece resumes a geographic experience, the obsessions and limitations of living in an island. Nonetheless, the work also has other connotations of meaning in a context like Cuba; because it synthesizes the permanent drama of isolation and emigration, the need, the pain or the illusion of going beyond the horizon. During a long and difficult process of work, the artist hurt accidentally his own hands leaving the traces of his blood on the painting. Then, he understood the creation process like another symbolic attitude that gave him the idea of using his own blood, another pigment that reinforces the content of the work. Each fish-hook was fixed to the plywood panel knocking a tiny nail. There is a close and allegorical relationship among fish-hooks, blood and the Sea; but in this case, the Sea and its horizon are the trap that seduces, divides and challenges.

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