To assume creation as a conscious act of self-improvement, of constant searches stemming from present demands, has been the maxim of one of the young artists who are writing the most recent pages in Cuban art: Fidel Yordán Castro. After graduating from the Oscar Fernández Morera Plastic Arts Academy (Trinidad, 2008), he is now studying in the Higher Art Institute (ISA), where the work he had done up to then is now exceedingly enriched after his insertion in the group project 4ta Pragmática, led by acknowledged artist René Francisco.
As a member of the group, he has made incursions into a series of projects, among them Class Pool (interventions in a pool, Nuevo Vedado) and Plan Calle (Street Plan –interventions in 74th Street between 9th and 11th, Playa), in 2010; Banca Rota (Bank Rupt –Royal Bank of Canada, Old Havana), and Trust (Factoria Habana, Old Havana), in 2011, each of which has marked a stage of evolution and growth. But, undoubtedly, his most mature piece is his last project, Ciudad Generosa (Generous City –an intervention in a park in 3rd and E Streets, Vedado) during the 11th Havana Biennial (2012), not only because of the magnitude –in formal-technical terms– of the undertaking, but as a compendium of interests of this guild of young artists, inspired by the idea of connecting art with social praxis. With intervention –or construction– of urban spaces as a starting point, they question the relationship existing between the subjects and their daily habitat; between the vertiginous development of society and what, because of it, inevitably becomes a ruin. At the same time, they scrutinize the complexity of interpersonal connections in the heart of the group, combining individual poetics while creating a sign system in a larger scale.
As an independent artist, Fidel has taken part in other samples, among the most recent ones A río revuelto (It’s an ill wind that blows, Mural Dome, ISA, 2011), Ático (Attic, Galería Luz y Oficios, Havana, 2012), and Trans-Late (IBSEN spaces, Casona de Línea, 2012). But Trance, which will be held in May this year in Avistamientos Gallery (Vedado), will be his first solo exhibition. This time his central topic will be painting, although this is not an artist we can rigidly categorize on the basis of his means of expression. This is how this exhibition, which exploits only one of the edges of his creative work, is linked to his former production based on the conception of installations. Each painting is in itself a piece bearing a meaning but, most of them, may be read in different ways if seen from the organic relationship many of them establish.
The thread linking up his entire oeuvre is to be found in the communion of the artist and the object-art and in the depth of his thinking –with no detriment to aesthetic qualities– underlying in each piece. From there on, he develops a diversity of discursive lines with the purpose of exploiting the plurality of ways and processes within his reach, to finally converge in a common point that, far from announcing itself as an epitome, becomes the genesis of new lectures.