Luis Enrique Camejo: The Island of the Day After, A Spiritual Moment

«The idea of this exhibition came out of a conversation I held with Alfredo Guevara, who told me that, when he was just a kiddo, he saw from the balcony of his home —near the bay of Havana— how the flooding swept along several picture hats of a neighbor, the allegedly lover of the Republic’s president in that time», acclaimed painter Luis Enrique Camejo revealed.

The show, titled The island of the day after (La isla del día después), includes eighteen artworks: eleven large-format watercolors and seven pieces that are smaller, which are a sort of «sketches» of future paintings, and it is set to be opened through December 31^st at Servando Cabrera gallery, 23 and 10, Vedado.

This title, the painter says, makes reference to a novel written by Italian writer and philosopher Umberto Eco, who published The island of the day before (La isla del día de antes) in 1994 and «although the display is not based on that text, it does have to do approach from the distancing, the unreachable: it’s a barely idealized and even romantic glimpse of the end».

Camejo confirmed that, just as it’s usual in terms of his creative process, represented elements come of out pictures, but he asserts that this time round they have been more manipulated: «my work has so far been based on the city watched from the inside to the outside, and now it is the opposite; the city is taken from the outside to the inside».

The island of the day after is made up of hair-raising pieces. Nevertheless, the painter affirms that his work «talks for itself» and he wants to have viewers interpreting it: «more than evident, I believe that this display features a metaphoric language. The first impression can take us back to a natural disaster, we are presently living in times in which mankind constantly thinks that the islands are going to disappear because the sea level will go up, but, beyond a meteorological event, I take it as a spiritual moment».

Camejo has been working on this topic for a while, and he participated in the past Havana Biennale with his piece tiled Emptiness (Vacío), which deals with issues that are also tackled by The island of the day after: «it’s hard to imagine the city without people and, therefore, this is a way to reflect on the pretended leading role played by mankind. So I wonder: what would happen to the city without the human presence? and my recent work goes deeper into that distancing, that fluctuation between the possibility and the impossibility.

Finally, he announced that he’s working on a series of thirty large-format pieces –which are subsequently going to be included on a book – that represent that number of cities of the world, such as New York, Madrid, Paris, Seville, Hong Kong, Monaco and London, and of course, Havana. Furthermore, within the first quarter of 2014, he is set to open a retrospective exhibition at Panama’s Museum of Contemporary Art and this will be the first time he makes a bronze sculpture, so he’s «very excited».

By Estrella Díaz

Fuente: habanafilmfestival.com