| 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.
|