A visit to his workshop in the capital’s Vedado was enough to realize that the painting of Moisés Finalé transcends time, remains lush, fresh, insurgent. The act of painting is still sacred to the Master, and neither the years nor the experience have managed to overshadow the true magic of he who dominates the trade or trump the greatness of his tropology. His creative journey is unstoppable and his action flawless. There is no rest for the fruitful and impetuous artist who fears not showing himself to the public, or even more, before the national audience and display as is without kinks or masking. Moisés Finalé recognizes the value of the receptive process, and understands that the work is completed only in dialogue with the viewer and then prefers to dust off the canvas and rush them on the walls of the gallery.
This time he selected for his latest personal exhibition the gallery hall Orígenes of Gran Teatro de La Habana (Grand Theater of Havana), perhaps because of its historical importance in the development of Cuban visual arts, but even more so for its huge walls ideal for displaying large formats. Levitación (Levitation) is the name of the show, and with the hedonistic enjoyment, always suggestive and palpitating, of Moisés representations, it is proposed a reflection on the creative process itself, as an exercise of conscious insight around language and symbolism of the artist.
Levitación consists of large canvases that combine past and present. It brings together works from previous exhibitions like Turista cubano (Cuban tourist, 2010) and Los silencios no existen (The silences are not there, 2015), with more topical pieces designed for the occasion. Once more the workman painting becomes complex, variegated, full of transfigured cultural references, where all the nuances of visual language acquire aesthetic prominence. It is a painting that reveals and conceals at the same time, with richly detailed graphics and symbolic subtleties that require careful watching, touring the surfaces fragment by fragment.
After each work a universe of stories is hidden, saturated with tales containing the genesis of the world and the wisdom of ancient cultures. Figures in Egyptian hieratic poses, African masks, Caribbean deities, mythological beings, liturgical objects, all structure the Finalé’s narrative, which is essentially anthropological. This is a painting that grows, a living art that offers new interpretations with each look; that drives you to rethink History, to discover its essence from the pure delight of dense, convoluted and changing forms. Levitación invites us to enter the complex cosmos of the architect, which is in turn a tight network of intercultural synthesis of all humanity. Moisés Finalé exhorts us this time to create alongside him, to configure his world to, a world that contains all the past and the future.
–Claudia Peréz