What is commonly seen in art is usually reproduced in reality. I agree with
critic Arthur C. Danto that the works of art, more than "sublime objects" are "ways
to look at the world" and to express a concrete circumstance. For that
reason I do not agree that artists should be reproached their resorting once
and again to a theme, if it is the reflection of a neuralgic problem of their
time and social environment. I make this reflection concerning Here I go ...Julio
Ferrer's exhibition that now occupies the walls of the 23 and 12 Gallery, in
Havana.
Russian washing machines from twenty years ago and American cars of the 50s;
sex exchange for visa to Disneyland or to the Tower of Pisa; paddle propulsion,
raft or turbojet up to Teotihuacán or Cochinchina… "There is nothing new",
somebody might say looking at the portraits. "But neither old", others
will respond thinking of the event of the moment involving their son or the
girl of the corner.
There are images that could seem "provoking" to us: in Our Father Jesus carries under his arm the supposed "salvation" (a truck inner tube that works as lifesaver if this has to do with crossing the sea ); or Cuban #3, licking aMega Nestlé-ice cream-international flights’ ship-leaking phallus. However, Julio Ferrer does not resort to them for mocking, neither for the moralizing intention: he places himself on the edge of satire, a sort of critical commentary or of a bitter local color that incites to reflection from humorousness and amusement.
The artist born in Cienfuegos, in 1973, and graduate from the National School
of Visual Arts, shows in these pieces his predilection for the language of
comics and the influence of pop art (even when appropriating the emblematic
wave of the Oriental Hokusai). His portraits of large format, in acrylic on
canvas, locate objects and characters in comic-like compositions, underlined
by the hard stroke of drawing and filled with wide color planes, in which blue,
red, black and white are plentiful.
This way of painting is already his characteristic, the same as the mixture
of irony and naturalness of his scenes. Everything indicates that Julio Ferrer
knows very well where he is going.