100 Creatives: Artist Frank Chinea Paints Scenes of a Moody Apocalypse
PAIGE ROSENTHAL | NOVEMBER 22, 2016
In honor of our "People" issue, which hit newsstands November 17, New Times proudly presents "100 Creatives," where we feature Miami's cultural superheroes. Have suggestions for future profiles? Let us know in the comments.
#83: Frank Chinea
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Frank Chinea’s art is a haunting and evocative rendition of the inner experience. Dark shadows and deep colors fill the canvas, depicting a stormy scene as a window to the subconscious. With contorted and thick brushstrokes, his work appears muddled as if blanketed in fog, but the characters and themes remain clear and defined. Chinea’s work explores the colors of loneliness and even, at times, despair but comes together dressed in the trappings of hope.
As if created from a dream, Chinea’s wildly fantastical displays explore a deeper channel of the unknown. The Cuban-American artist positions himself as a window into the soul – carefully crafting scenarios that, as humans, we want to explore and those we do not want to face. His work has been displayed locally and across the globe, at venues such as the Shanghai Art Fair and Barrio Museum.
100 Creatives: Artist Frank Chinea Paints Scenes of a Moody Apocalypse
What was your last big project?
"Black Dreams 2010," a solo show at the gallery Curators Voice Art Project, curated by Dr. Milagros Bello.
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What is your next project?
My current project is based on personal experience. It took place during my childhood at Riverside Elementary School in 1963; I was a recent arrival and spoke very little English. Sometime after lunch, an alarm bell rang, and to my surprise, we were all told to go under our desk and cover our heads with both of our hands. This incident has remained in my memory for all these years and in the memory of many in my generations.
What do you want Miami to know about you?
My barrio kids and how we assimilated in this new world.
What don’t you want Miami to know about you?
That my favourite city is New York.
What’s one thing you want people to know about Miami?
Our multicultural diaspora.
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Barrio Workshop Artspace
After Neo-expressionism - Miami
Five Miami-based Cuban artists aligned with the Neo-Expressionist tradition – Yovani Bauta, Frank Chinea Inguanzo, Carlos A. Díaz Barrios, Vicente Dopico-Lerner, and Ramón Lago - gathered together in a gallery that is deliberately marginal and warmly human: Barrio Workshop Artspace.
By Eduard Reboll
The exhibition, curated by Willy Castellanos with support from the Aluna Art Foundation, an organization he created together with Adriana Herrera, was the Foundation’s inaugural exhibit, and it afforded a space for the creative voices that cannot make themselves heard and have things to say about the city. The place is situated outside the classic circuits of Wynwood, Design District or Coral Gables, and it identifies with the lyrics conveyed through graffiti on its façade.
Yovani Bauta’s series, The forgotten, was a direct and justified homage to the title of Buñuel’s movie, but instead of children, it was the elderly that were depicted under an intense red on the canvases. The tension in the composition arose from the contrast between the almost planar backgrounds behind the figures and the tension between the naked bodies that evoked the paintings of Lucien Freud, according to Castellanos, the curator of the show, and Bacon’s grimmer portraits. Frank Chinea, on the other hand, situated his crackled compositions in inner dreams that moved like his closest ghosts or his most significant losses. They were works in which the light could only be glimpsed, and even in that case, it was as though it had begun to die out. The personal and the subjective coalesced to create a world that was more Munch-like, to my view, when the characters and the landscape were grouped together, or Chagallian, according to the curator, when the darkness echoed labyrinthine narratives.
Poetry was not absent from this exhibit, and it was personified by Carlos A. Díaz Barrios, who abided by the dictates of the myth or the innocence of the maker. His fingers were his tools, axes and scrapers that carved on the surface perplexed characters that could take us from genuine laughter to a feeling of unease or to an attentive gaze. For the fact is that, before being a visual artist, Díaz Barrios was a poet, and his canvases contained his past as a bard. With a more linear and volatile brushwork, and more concerned with light than with color, Vicente Dopico-Lerner offered a series of profile portraits filled with a sweet sadness, with terror on some occasions and with restfulness on others, which were in tune with the global panorama of the exhibition. Lastly, the genre of small-format sculpture was represented by Ramón Lago, particularly in his series The Four Seasons, which through his hedonistic and derisive style was capable of conveying, via individuals with prominent stomachs and open-mouth smiles, all the happiness that the gods of Olympus offered to human beings.
Personally speaking, I endorse the curatorial thesis included in the catalogue written by Castellanos and Herrera, who declare that “at a time when the inclusion of narrative in art seems to have come to an end, these artists vindicate the subjective as a vital form of affirmation…and they even come close to certain romanticism and to a poetry of tenderness.” Words which are somehow opposed to the reluctance of most galleries in the metropolis to tackle the elaboration of a discourse on the effects of the world crisis. Adhering to the predominance of a conceptual art, they leave practices that do not enjoy the favor of the market aside. After Neo-Expressionism is more a question than a title. And it offers, from there, a vision of what is happening in the panorama of creation in Southern Florida.
After Neo-expressionism – Miami
by Eduard Reboll
Five Miami-based Cuban artists aligned with the Neo-Expressionist tradition – Yovani Bauta, Frank Chinea Inguanzo, Carlos A. Díaz Barrios, Vicente Dopico-Lerner, and Ramón Lago − gathered together in a gallery that is deliberately marginal and warmly human: Barrio Workshop Artspace.
The exhibition, curated by Willy Castellanos with support from the Aluna Art Foundation, an organization he created together with Adriana Herrera, was the Foundation’s inaugural exhibit, and it afforded a space for the creative voices that cannot make themselves heard and have things to say about the city. The place is situated outside the classic circuits of Wynwood, Design District or Coral Gables, and it identifies with the lyrics conveyed through graffiti on its façade.
Yovani Bauta’s series, The forgotten, was a direct and justified homage to the title of Buñuel’s movie, but instead of children, it was the elderly that were depicted under an intense red on the canvases. The tension in the composition arose from the contrast between the almost planar backgrounds behind the figures and the tension between the naked bodies that evoked the paintings of Lucien Freud, according to Castellanos, the curator of the show, and Bacon’s grimmer portraits. Frank Chinea, on the other hand, situated his crackled compositions in inner dreams that moved like his closest ghosts or his most significant losses. They were works in which the light could only be glimpsed, and even in that case, it was as though it had begun to die out. The personal and the subjective coalesced to create a world that was more Munch-like, to my view, when the characters and the landscape were grouped together, or Chagallian, according to the curator, when the darkness echoed labyrinthine narratives.
Poetry was not absent from this exhibit, and it was personified by Carlos A. Díaz Barrios, who abided by the dictates of the myth or the innocence of the maker. His fingers were his tools, axes and scrapers that carved on the surface perplexed characters that could take us from genuine laughter to a feeling of unease or to an attentive gaze. For the fact is that, before being a visual artist, Díaz Barrios was a poet, and his canvases contained his past as a bard. With a more linear and volatile brushwork, and more concerned with light than with color, Vicente Dopico-Lerner offered a series of profile portraits filled with a sweet sadness, with terror on some occasions and with restfulness on others, which were in tune with the global panorama of the exhibition. Lastly, the genre of small-format sculpture was represented by Ramón Lago, particularly in his series The Four Seasons, which through his hedonistic and derisive style was capable of conveying, via individuals with prominent stomachs and open-mouth smiles, all the happiness that the gods of Olympus offered to human beings.
Personally speaking, I endorse the curatorial thesis included in the catalogue written by Castellanos and Herrera, who declare that “at a time when the inclusion of narrative in art seems to have come to an end, these artists vindicate the subjective as a vital form of affirmation…and they even come close to certain romanticism and to a poetry of tenderness.” Words which are somehow opposed to the reluctance of most galleries in the metropolis to tackle the elaboration of a discourse on the effects of the world crisis. Adhering to the predominance of a conceptual art, they leave practices that do not enjoy the favor of the market aside. After Neo-Expressionism is more a question than a title. And it offers, from there, a vision of what is happening in the panorama of creation in Southern Florida.
NOBE 67 ART
At The Deauville Beach Resort Hotel.
The Show for Artists, Curators and Galleries
Curated by Milagros Bello
RUTAS DEL ARTE
El logro de `Nobe 67 Art'
ADRIANA HERRERA
Especial/El Nuevo Herald
Entre las incontables pequeñas ferias de arte que inundaron la ciudad a comienzos de diciembre, hay que destacar el esfuerzo que permitió presentar en el Deauville Beach Resort Hotel --un hotel que tuvo su esplendor en la era dorada de Miami Beach-- el showNobe 67 Art, curado por Milagros Bello. El concepto general se concentró en presentar, según esta curadora, ''una sólida generación de artistas de diferentes generaciones y tendencias focalizándose en ``nuevos lenguajes y nuevas voces en la escena de arte de Miami''. De modo paralelo se presentaron piezas de las colecciones Meruelo, Correa, y Amat con maestros de generaciones precedentes como Cundo Bermúdez, Manuel Mendive, Mariano Rodríguez y Carmelo González, entre otros.
El formato de exhibición evitó la saturación visual de otras ferias y permitió al público una relación directa con los artistas que están enfrentando en la ciudad las preocupaciones del arte contemporáneo. Los stands de Charo Oquet, Othon Castañeda, Antuan, Juan-Sí, Lydia Rubio, o Daniel Fiorda, por ejemplo, permitían reconocer las creaciones más recientes de artistas con un largo trabajo en la ciudad. Los cuadros e instalaciones de Evelyn Valdirio abarcaban diversos períodos: todo el lenguaje de las rosas azules y rojas a partir de los cuales indagó en problemáticas asociadas a la relación entre violencia, género e identidad, pero también piezas en las que usa collages para confrontar al espectador con la simbología de distintos modos de destrucción masiva: la guerra o la negación de la legitimidad de otras culturas. Carolina Sanllehi abordó el mismo tema con una instalación de un soldado hecha con el uniforme real de un ex combatiente norteamericano y una pantalla que transmite imágenes de la invasión a Irak.
Los tejidos de Pip Brant, artista maestra en el uso de este medio como sustrato de un arte conceptual y las combinaciones de Erman de cerámica y texto y tejido --cuyas raíces etimológicas establecen un origen común-- muestran el modo en que los nuevos lenguajes contemporáneos hacen uso de lo artesanal. Las instalaciones de Edna Marrero de pequeñas manadas de animales de felpa surrealistas no rompen los imaginarios colectivos de lo sagrado al modo de un Christian Hollstand, sino reafirman la capacidad humana de seguir buscando lo inexistente. Por su parte, las esculturas de Karen Glinski, reactualizan la vieja tradición de los retratos antropozoomórficos con un lenguaje fresco y lleno de humor. Además de las indagaciones de Andrés Michelena en la deconstrucción y reconstrucción de iconografías de origen religioso; de las piezas aparentemente bellas en las que Aisen Chacin expresa fuertes contenidos de violencia infantil; de los juguetes con los cuales Carlos J. Tirado se adhiere a la tradición del objeto recontextualizado; o de las patinetas intervenidas por Rubén Ubiera, es interesante destacar los serios trabajos fotográficos de tres artistas: Nitim Vadukul, con imágenes de ficción que recrean atmósferas futuristas devastadas; Liliam Domínguez, que capta en los reflejos de vitrinas de distintas ciudades del mundo los marcos culturales que modelan nuestras percepciones y que recrea a partir de superposiciones fotográficas escenarios cargados de memorias; y Meg Pukel, que recontextualiza el cuerpo femenino con archivos urbanos --hoteles, centros industriales, anuncios-- abriendo puertas a otros diálogos entre el cuerpo y la
cultura.
El show, que incluyó una muestra de nuevos medios con artistas internacionales seleccionados por la curadora Jocelyn Adele González-Junco, de Hamburgo, rindió tributo especial al ''invaluable legado en artes visuales'' del cubano Cundo Bermúdez y el venezolano Diego
Barboza.
Publicado el domingo 15 de agosto del 2010
Frank Chinea: el inconsciente como fuente de inspiración
CARLOS M. LUIS
Es un error afirmar que las grandes corrientes pictóricas que constituyeron la vanguardia durante las tres primeras décadas del siglo XX, han agotado sus energías. El Cubismo, el Surrealismo, el Abstraccionismo o el Expresionismo no cesan de dar muestras de una vitalidad creadora, latente en algunos casos, manifiesta en otros. Pongamos por ejemplo la reciente exposición de los cuadros de Frank Chinea que la galería de Milagros Bello, está mostrando. Lo que nos sorprende de entrada es la confluencia de dos de esas corrientes: la cubista y la expresionista, en unas pinturas que se hunden, por otra parte, en el inconsciente como fuente de inspiración surrealista. Comencemos por el final, o sea tratando de descifrar esas composiciones suyas tan llenas de alegorías, que tocan el resorte de un mundo sumergido en su memoria. De una memoria onírica, habría que añadir. En cuadros como Awakening, Broken o La bendición, la realidad se confunde con experiencias de cosas pasadas, que sus sueños pesadillescos convierten en tétricos escenarios. Esa primera impresión nos hace pensar que Frank Chinea bordea una expresión que vemos en el arte de los llamados ``dementes''. No solamente por los personajes que lo pueblan, evidentemente alienados, sino por la composición donde logra situarlos. La asimetría de la misma, y el encerramiento en compartimentos de algunos de sus personajes (La bendición o La mano de Dios), nos trasmite unas visiones que sólo pueden pasar por una mirada alucinada. He ahí pues, su conexión con el Surrealismo.
Pasemos ahora a la composición. La desarticulación fue una de las constantes de la noción estructural de los cubistas. Para ellos la realidad estaba provista de una serie de elementos que pedían ser desmontados, y ser recompuestos de nuevo bajo un ritmo disonante. En ciertos cuadros de Chinea percibimos unas armazones crujientes (Yo, 2008), a punto de derrumbarse. Esa arquitectura no obedece a las leyes que guían la construcción armónica de un edificio. La arquitectura de Chinea responde a su necesidad de exponer una realidad que surge, como ya habíamos expresado, de su subconsciente. Nada en esos cuadros suyos alude a un estado de complacencia con el mundo exterior. Por el contrario, la complejidad de sus andamiajes nos indica un sentido de composición, que la disciplina cubista le ha proporcionado. Pero el pintor ha querido transgredir esa disciplina, a favor de una ruptura con el eje mismo que la sostiene. De ahí que algunas de sus composiciones rompan con el molde del cubismo analítico. Detrás desde luego se encuentra otro elemento: el expresionista.
El expresionismo es la vía idónea para soltar los fantasmas interiores que pueblan la imaginación de muchos artistas. Goya lo demostró hasta la saciedad, y me parece que el espíritu del genial aragonés se encuentra susurrándole algo al oído de Frank Chinea. En cuadros como Broken los tres elementos se dan de la mano: el surrealista (representado por las figuras algo chagalescas de la izquierda), el expresionista, por el uso del color de los trazos y los personajes espectrales que aparecen a la derecha. Finalmente el cubista, por su distribución espacial. Pero lo que prevalece, como en el resto de sus cuadros, es un tratamiento fuertemente cargado de expresionismo, gracias al uso de un colorido intenso e impenetrable.