Saturday, November 3, 2018

Artist of the day, November 3-4: Carlos Estévez, Cuban-born painter, sculptor and photographer

Carlos Alberto Estévez Carasa (1969) is a Cuban-born painter, sculptor and photographer. He received the Grand Prize in the First Salon of Contemporary Cuban Art in 1995, as well as The Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters & Sculptors Grant in 2015.

Estévez works with a wide array of mediums, through which he embodies various philosophical and artistic concepts that explore the relationship between man and the universe, and often reflect Cuban social and political realities. His most recognizable paintings and drawings often feature Estévez’s trademark, marionette puppets he creates using star-like dots connected with lines that create the mesmerizing effects of star constellations. Estevez’s visions transcend everyday experience, as if the bankruptcy of future utopias had forced him to create a realm of beliefs and knowledge anchored in the solid bastions of universal history, culture, and myth. His drawings and canvases have combined images of animals, human anatomy, and mechanical blueprints within the fixed grids of cartography. He does this by means of transparencies that recall treatises of esotericism, alchemy, acupuncture, or Da Vinci’s anatomical codices. “My main tools,” he has stated, “are metaphors of man’s existential questions, for instance, his power, his weakness, his essence, and his mission in the universe”

His work at the McColl Center in Charlotte formed the foundation for what would eventually become an extensive proficiency in ceramics. In the four months that he spent at the center, he made over 200 ceramic pieces. His plates, especially, have a unique elegance and concentrate on color, expressive shapes, and thematic abstractions that refer to architecture, astronomy, and anatomy.

© 2018. All images are copyrighted © by Carlos Estévez. The use of any image from this site is prohibited unless prior written permission is obtained.

 

Mr Carlos Estévez























































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