The Great Systems – Gustavo Acosta / Flights of Fancy – Carlos González

Carlos González, Finding Light, 2009, Stainless steel, 72” x 86” x 80”, Photos by Gory, Courtesy of the artist and Pan American Art Projects, Miami

  By Chaliang Merino

“For a lifetime I have sought nothing more than

 the essence of flight…flight, what joy!”

Brancusi (Eliade 166).

“To soar” involves breeching the wall of the mundane to internalize, perhaps, the purest essence of our reality. Then, from above, startled by so much finiteness, we prepare for that voyage of yearning toward the city from whence we came and toward which we travel, there where stories are interconnected and new paths, journeys, and narrations are configured. On this occasion, Pan American Art Projects invites us to “ascend” through the individual poetics of Carlos González and Gustavo Acosta.

 “Flights of Fancy” constitutes a great summoning of the organic unity of existence. Striving to develop imagery tending to exalt the metaphoric man-nature-science relationship, Carlos González delights in the technical excellence of contraptions manufactured with refined artisanal skill. The burnished steel of turnbuckles, cables, staples and screws convert his strong concepts into eerie flimsiness and lights bestow a certain “lenticular printing” quality. Whether it be flying insects carried to their lowest level of expression or ingenious inventions created to take flight and inspired by biological models, the pieces of Carlos González emit rich symbolic allusions and always invoke formal precision, virtuous craftsmanship, and aesthetic enjoyment of the observer. 

 Perfect Flight, Flights of Fancy and Finding Light –such as, a flying dandelion puff- are monumental works that compel the most uninhibited sensory enjoyment. Between the gravity of “tiny” wings and the aligned blades that mimic oars, can there be any doubt that we are undertaking a new journey, resuming a lost path, discovering freedom or shoring up the great utopias?

 Gustavo Acosta, on the other hand, soars among the remnants and backwardness of a dormant, humiliated, and devastated city that can only be perceived from afar. Havana, “city of the unfinished, of the lame, of the asymmetrical, of the abandoned” -Carpentier would say in his Crónicas del regreso (The Homecoming Chronicles)- is observed through an unusual lens. Expressive use of and experimentation with the color green in its widest spectrum bring not only veiled fragments to light, but also an allusive and suggestive substrate of memories and imprecise sensations. Pieces, such as, The Last Chance, The Mirror and the East View, The Art of Illusion and The Great System display aerial views of a city watched hesitantly. The persistent exploration of green places us before atmospheres rarefied by this polarized filter, which insists on leading us on a voyage of yearning, discomfort and lost illusions. While The Big Splash threatens to splash us, Trompe L’oeil reproduces the deafening silence of a desolate urban landscape.

 From another perspective, the series Secret Codes displays nocturnal snapshots of cities kept awake by vast lighting systems, abstract seconds of flights and journeys, infallible memories of uncertain destinies.   

 Works Cited

 Eliade, Mircea. “Brancusi y la mitología.” El vuelo mágico. Madrid: Ediciones Siruela, 2005: 159-167.

Chaliang Merino: Art critic. BA in Art History (Universidad de La Habana, Cuba); MA in Art Management (St. Thomas University, Miami).