CUBANS @ the Norcross Cultural Art Center, Atlanta, GA

CUBANS - A benefit for 5 Decades of Cuban Art. Oct 18th to Nov. 18th - Opening reception Oct. 18th 6:30 - 9:00 PM.

Please join us this Friday for festive evening full of exceptional Cuban multidisciplinary artwork that includes drawings, paintings, photography, video art and documentary, live music and appetizers.
An auction and art sale with the proceeds supporting one of the largest ever Cuban Exhibition in the Southeast (coming Autum 2014).

Artists: Magdiel Aspillaga | Ana Caridad Becerra | Consuelo Castaneda | Lenia Castro | Rafael Fornés | |Roberto Garrido | Ana Guzmán | Juan Si González | José Hidalgo | Hamlet Lavastida | Rafael López Ramos | Guillermo Portieles | Ernesto Torres | Lazaro Torres | Rey Vargas | Pedro Vizcaíno | Ramón Williams.

Music by group Alejandro and the Third

Norcross Arts Center | 17 College Street | Historic Norcross, GA 30071 (NEXT TO LIONHEART THEATER & LILLIAN WEBB PARK)

CUBANS

Cubans in Art, Cubans through the senses at the usual crossroads, a visual testimony which reflects the never ending dialogue between man and circumstances. Any part of the whole, a sample of a rich plastic tradition that resisted all sorts of imprevisible trials, can summarize the secret energies that emanate from the Cuban spirit. Such are the premises for the present exhibit, which serves as a preamble for a bigger show set up for the coming months. Probably the most significant confluence of Cuban artists in the South, all living in exile, as it includes the works of many active generations, the show will not limit its scope to a mere displaying of tendencies and styles, but to focus on Art conceived through a state of otherness. That state could be described by symbols of substantiation: Cubans as witnesses of crucial events; Cubans recreating their unique atmosphere of tension in terms of history, race, religion, culture; Cubans refusing to place themselves in the margins of any plot. Also, a cynical look that is never gratuitous, dispensed with intelligence and humor.

In many ways, an underlying affinity between the insular and southern discernment is found when it comes to cultural expression, namely openness, territorial attachment and to traditions. Cuban Contemporary Art, seen here from a conceptual perspective, breaks away from the generational easy view as it feeds off the same references and obsessions without being rhetorical. Different forms of elusiveness, exile, diaspora or even self-exile, have not fractured the common discourse that encircles the Cuban quest for awareness. No matter what variation it adopts, explicit or subtle, in plastic or written form, the same vision prevails: redemption by meaning. Samples of this one goal will be found here: pure enjoyment of color and movement, the challenge of re-contextualizing, the assumption of the pure ephemeral, the discovery of essential truths behind routines, the beauty of spontaneity. Most of all, the concept of Art as a reflection of endurance, the unaltered state of the self.

Manuel Sosa