A gathering of sculptures makes up the most recent personal exhibition of the Cuban artist Pedro Pablo Oliva. A look is enough to recognize the fantastic appearance offered by the numerous artworks cast in bronze. This is a harmonically structured exhibit where every piece opens up to the space and as a whole, they complete the artist’s magic universe; a group of scenes that exceed any reliable referent to reality. Images of playful appearance resemble dreams; a flood of sensations, memories and desires that are lived wholeheartedly.
The scenes suggested become the trigger to call up experiences. Stories that are presented from the subtleness of shapes and that are accompanied by ideas that reassert the self-referential character that lives in Oliva’s artistic creation. Artworks pervaded of a strong spiritual charge where every line is set out to highlight emotions. A world of dreams where everything invites to reflection, since from that Muchacha condenada a vivir con una piedra en la cabeza (Girl condemned to live with a stone in her head, 2009) until El héroe (The hero, 2016), they all offer a rich framework of signs. Thus it is evident the provocative game that is set out between the figures presented and the titles to which they are related.
Among the great group of pieces in the exhibition hall it is notable El beso (The kiss, 2011), which belongs to the series Alegrías y tristezas de El Malecón (Malecón’s joys and sorrows). The preeminence of this creation is reasserted because of its large size and the privileged position in which it was placed. This is an artwork that takes up again the kiss as a theme in the arts, but using Pedro Pablo Oliva’s peculiar language. This is an extremely subtle kiss that, without touching the lips, makes more acute the emotion from a subjective vision closer to the feeling than to reality itself. We find representation codes that introduce us through the ways where the soul and the body meet due to spirituality; the same spirituality that must guide us through Oliva’s magic world.
–Claudia Montero