Luis López-Chávez

The work shows the now deteriorated motif of the tiling patterns of Cuban colonial houses, a symbol of the country’s republican past. The composition is situated between abstraction and the figurative, with only the ray of light that traverses the composition making reference to the real. Hence, the painting shifts from figuration to abstraction following the viewer’s distance. 

Luis E. López-Chávez  (Manzanillo, Cuba, 1988) graduated from the Professional Academy of Plastic Arts in Manzanillo in 2007 and from the Higher Institute of Art in Havana in 2013. In 2012 he received a scholarship for the Royal Institute of Art, Stockholm, Sweden. 

In his work, he has been conducting a research exercise on the development of plastic form and the frictions it generates when introduced into the logical space of the world as an affirmation. Based on these frictions with the socio-historical context, language or with art itself, he proposes a visuality contained between a conceptual methodology and an unconscious pulse, between a philosophical proposal and a poetic image.

The initial motivation on certain subjects such as space or emptiness, the idea of death, in its different approaches, loses its protagonism in the work process. The forms that yield or are repeated in order to approach and enunciate these themes are fundamental, they become the imperative. For the artist, a work is the work process that it can generate, which implies movement of ideas, forms, and an autonomous decantation of these, where many remain unfinished and at the same time demand their own development. 

In 2015 he was invited to the 12th Havana Biennial, with the project Los síntomas del engaño exhibited at the National Museum of Fine Arts in Havana. 

Among his main solo exhibitions are: El acto total, organized by Galleria Continua, at the Unión Nacional de Arquitectos e Ingenieros de la Construcción de Cuba (UNAICC) (2019); Las Contravenciones, El Apartamento, Havana (2019); Contra los poetas, Galería Servando, Havana (2017); It's Useless, Museo Droguería Johnson, Havana (2016); Once upon a time in the country country, Fundación Ludwig de Cuba (2014); Fuera de Campo, Centro de Desarrollo de las Artes Visuales, Havana (2013). 

His work has been part of the following group exhibitions: Cómo está el agua and Diamante en bruto, Galleria Continua, Havana (2018); Ola Cuba, Lille 3000, Lille, France (2017); Soy Cuba, Palazzina dei Bagni Misteriosi-Teatro Franco Parenti, Milan, Italy (2017); Continua Spheres Ensemle, 104 (Cent Quatre), Paris, France (2017); Cuba mi amor, Galleria Continua, Les Moulins, France (2017); Nido sin árbol, organized by Galleria Continua at Unión Nacional de Arquitectos e Ingenieros de la Construcción de Cuba (UNAICC) (2016); La Pala (a la corta o a la larga), Centro de Desarrollo de las Artes Visuales, Havana (2016); Por el dos, 6th Salon of Contemporary Cuban Art (2014); Agua salada, Centro Hiospanoamericano de Cultura, Havana (2014); The silent shout: voices in Cuba abstraction, ArtSpace/Virginia Miller Galleries, Miami, USA (2013); Spring Exhibition, Kungl. Konsthögskolan/The Royal Institute of Art. Stockholm, Sweden (2012), among others.