"Far from Them" by Joanne Níkel
April 11, 2005. Centerstage Chicago's "Art Trips"
Havana Gallery is an outpost for a cut-off culture, solely featuring artwork by Cubans. Though art is allowed to pass to and from Cuba to the U.S., human travel is more tightly regulated. In 2003 a law was passed to keep Cuban-Americans from returning to their homeland more than once every three years. As a reaction to this kind of political and emotional distance, Pablo Perea presents 50 new paintings, most of which are dedicated to his family back in Cuba. In a romantic vein, several paintings pronounce Perea's love for his wife, who lives here in Chicago with him. The brushy paintings with expressively cool and hot colors remind one of Fauvist and Cubist works from the early twentieth century, though the emotional message is hardly dated.