Iván Perera (La Habana, 1993) lives and works in Havana. He studied visual arts at the Eduardo Abela Fine Arts Academy (2008-2012) and the Higher Institute of Art (ISA) (2013-2018) both in Cuba. He has participated in workshops with Burg Giebichenstein University, Germany (2016) and California Institute of the Arts CalArts, California. His work has been shown at The church, Vermont Studio Center, Johnson, VT (2019); The National Museum of Art, La Paz, Bolivia (2018); the Ludwig Foundation, Havana (2017); Rogue Space, Chelsea, NY (2016); Burg Giebichenstein University, Halle, Germany (2016); Artista X Artista, Havana (2016) among others.
Perera is interested in the origins of the materials, their history, their composition, their physical appearance, and how they adhere to a certain environment or situation. That is why he works with different media: sculpture and installation, photographs and drawings. Through them, he follows the time in the object: the decisions, the accidents that occur, the accumulated experiences, the learning, and the ideas that are derived from the object.
The works I propose are based on the use of photographic illustrations from old book pages that have been marked due to the passage of time. These are images that I reframe or cut out and that are then processed using Dynamic Auto Painter. By processing in the software images that lack a significant amount of information, I take advantage of the program's failures in recognizing them to generate my digital paintings.
I am interested in the fact that I can use a popular software with which anyone can make a painting, to create particular images, exploiting the program's own system failures. By offering to process files with insufficient information for its conversion standards, my intention is to give a second life to images forgotten over time. I customize them from the error of the software unable to properly process the ghost of an image. Thus, I create paintings that invite a reflection on our human condition, fragile and fleeting.
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The two skulls embody binary pairs that in this case are represented as part of a whole, life and death, light and darkness, existence and non-existence are part of an infinite cycle in which one begins the other.
In the painting, one skull looks at the subject holding it and the other looks at the viewer. They seem to question the first and invite a reflection about time and the existence of those who observe the image.
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The work presents a mask in which any society could recognize itself: an anthropological object that expresses the need to perpetuate self-consciousness; an element on which light falls to create shadow; a proposal of the occult and mysterious.
I am interested in starting from this ancestral cultural element to highlight the need to build our image in contemporary society marked by the rise of new technologies for human relations.
In the same way that we as human beings hide behind the image we want to project of ourselves, politics, religion and economy hide behind their own masks.
The mask expresses our inner fears, insecurities and anxieties in a society that aims at the perfection of the individual in his social relations.
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The image of the savior, in contemporary times, seems to be nothing more than a reflection of its own canons. In today's society, the construction of the imaginary of Christ, according to the biblical account, seems to have been supplanted by an obsession with beauty and well-being that began centuries ago and under which the church operates.
In the work, the mythical figure is presented to us as a being that seems to be taking a stroll, distracted and calm. Christ is shown as human, exacerbated in his own thoughts. The formula of any good contemporary press photograph to show a celebrity. The character poses for society, which needs people in whom to recognize itself, figures in whom to place its fears, worries and desires.
The need to validate ourselves in the other is a sign of the obsessions of today's society.