Lorena Gutierrez Camejo: Luminol

Curated by Aylet Ojeda, the exhibition “Luminol” uses abstract painting and installation to explore, from a critical perspective, some significant events in Cuba’s recent history. The exhibition’s title evokes a powerful metaphor: luminol is a chemical substance used at crime scenes to reveal fingerprints invisible to the naked eye. The common denominator of the seven works on display is the interpellation of power and the “critical” rereading of history. The artist intends to do so “with a vision that tries to go beyond the repeated victories.”

In one of her works, which has a geometric and abstract style, Gutiérrez tackles the topic of music industry censorship, which is still relevant today. The artist argues that this series illustrates how Cuban music, like other facets of culture, has been censored.

PENTAGRAMA NEGRO (CONCIERTO PARA MUCHAS MANOS

"This work can be understood as a continuation of Letra Negra (La Moderna Poesía), the pictorial installation about censorship in several Cuban poets that we already exhibited at Text Image. With this work I also address the subject of censorship but now from the perspective of music, both from the composition and musical interpretation. The work consists of 13 paintings and I identify each of them with a Cuban musician who was removed from the musical and artistic scene for his ideas contrary to the prevailing ideology. Among them are Celia Cruz, Bola de Nieve, Ernesto Lecuona, Rita Montaner, Willi Chirino, Gloria Estefan, La Lupe, and so on until reaching a total of 13 musicians. To choose these excellent musicians I have carried out a search and investigation in which I found, in their respective works, compositions where they mention color in some of their songs. For the pictorial resolution of the work I appropriated the covers of a collection of suspense books that circulated in Cuba in the period immediately after the Gray Five Years (1971-1976) and until approximately 1981. (It is known that the term Gray Five Years is a euphemism, since Ambrosio Fornet, the father of the term, tried to take away the intensity of the period. Today there are those who call it the Black Decade.) I appropriated these covers for several reasons: 1. The literary theme of the series is fundamentally police and suspense, somewhat typifying the spirit of those times lived under censorship. 2. The covers themselves are especially beautiful and little known in their symbiosis of geometric abstraction and op-art, which I want to take advantage of to highlight the alienating effect that the social being subject to censorship and marginalization in society can feel. In one panel of each work I will also insert the pictorial representation of a musical staff with emphasis on the color that I have selected from the artist's work."

"This piece will have its musical recording in the opening, as I have contacted the Gladys Palmera Foundation and I have given them the research that I have done on the musicians and we have collaborated on a remix with this music and there will be a live performance on the day of the opening.This piece will have its musical recording in the opening, as I have contacted the Gladys Palmera Foundation and I have given them the research that I have done on the musicians and we have collaborated on a remix with this music and there will be a live performance on the day of the opening."

LA REVOLUCION ES UNA COSA ABSTRACTA

"For this work I have appropriated a series of 48 stamps that were issued on the 50th anniversary of the triumph of the Cuban Revolution. It is a series of stamps focused on exposing the achievements of the process in its first 50 years of existence. As you already know, I have worked with postage stamps in a general series that I have titled The Value of Cancellation. In this particular work I replicate each of the stamps in the series in abstract paintings. My idea is that they can even be identified with the stamp to which each painting refers, since I intend to exhibit both the painting and the series of stamps it represents. The conceptual closing of this work will be a stamp on the anniversary of the State Security Organs, and its corresponding painting appealing to the leading role of this institution in the Revolution itself."

LEOPOLDO ÁVILA ESTÁ VIVO

Leopoldo Ávila was a sinister character within Cuban culture. It turns out that he was not known, since he was an anonymous, non-existent being, and from the pages of the magazine Verde Olivo, a magazine subordinated to the Revolutionary Armed Forces, in the 60s he was an art critic and was a strong element in validating or censoring writers and creators in general. My painting will be on an olive green background and I will try to recreate the writing that Eduardo García Delgado made before dying under shrapnel; who, according to revolutionary historiography, wrote the name of Fidel with his blood. My work, from my position as an artist, would also be talking about “final moments” or “limit moments” and with my “blood” (red paint) I would write the text as a cry. Leopoldo Ávila is alive trying to contextualize in today's world the processes of censorship and invisibility that artists suffer.

TURISMO POLÍTICO

"This piece is an installation that has the tourist guide as the main element. Around 50 tourist guides from different latitudes will be arranged on a table, all of them linked with Cuba with yarn, forming something similar to a spider web. I have been acquiring guides in recent years and have encouraged the purchase of those countries that have been strategic for the expansion of Cuban geopolitics and the maintenance of a zone of influence in different latitudes. The idea is to establish the link that Cuba had in the promotion, creation and development of guerrillas, opposition movements, opinion leaders, political parties; both in Latin America, as well as in Africa, the Middle East and even the United States. Cuba's relations with the Black Panther movement, Montoneros, ETA, Shining Path, FARC-EP, Al-Fatah, and a long etcetera are well known. This is the general conception of the work, which closes with three background paintings, each panel corresponding to the three interlocutors who have had these actions: the Liberation Department, the American Department and the General Intelligence Directorate. In each panel, the connections that mark the threads of yarn on the ground will be shown from the aesthetics of geometric abstractionism."

Inquire

MÁXIMO COMÚN DIVISOR

"In this piece I am updating a work I did last year (Minimum, Common and Multiple). The idea is to show an installation that includes both an olive green military shirt with many medals hanging on the left lapel, as dictated by military regulations, and its pictorial expression based on the visual codes of geometric abstractionism. What is new about this work is that I will also include a guayabera with a similar number of medals with its corresponding representational painting. This work speaks of the conversion that those guerrillas who became successful businessmen have undergone with the common element of medals as support and sustenance."

AROMAS ESLAVOS QUE REGRESAN

"This painting will represent the famous Moscow Red perfume that was sold in Cuba in the 70s and 80s. A perfume that, in the context of the Cold War, was a symbol and competition for the famous Chanel No. 5. My intention with this work is to talk about the return of aromas, mainly political, that we already experienced before the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the satellite character of Cuba in Russian geopolitics. Recently, a Russian naval squadron and an atomic submarine were received in Cuba and these were the reasons that determined the realization of this piece within the aesthetics of fashion and glamour that I have worked on previously."

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Lorena Gutierrez Camejo: Luminol: Pan American Art Projects in Madrid, Spain

Solo Show - Curated by Aylet Ojeda Jequín

September 12 - september 28, 2024

MADRID, SPAIN

cALLE SAN LORENZO, 3