Frío estudio del desastre, 2005
Cinder blocks, concrete, fishing nylon Dimensions site-specific
Photo: Marcos Morilla
Los Carpinteros appeared on the Cuban art scene at the beginning of the 1990s, a moment of transition during which Cuba’s loss of economic aid from the Soviet Union led to dire poverty and a repressive political climate.
There was more than ever, among artists, a turn to metaphor, double meaning and fictionalization in order to dissipate mechanisms of control and censorship. As the name of the group so graphically demonstrates, Los Carpinteros [the carpenters] take much of their artistic persona from the notion of craftsmanship in its most material sense. Frío estudio del desastre [Frozen Study of a Disaster] plays on the uncanny relationship to space as a disembodied picture of reality by presenting what appears to be a three-dimensional reconstruction of a photographic image depicting an exploding wall. Fragments from a cinder block wall hang suspended in the air, while a gaping hole in the wall indicates the point of impact of the blast responsible for this disaster. The gallery visitor walks through this eerie scene as if somehow navigating a two-dimensional representation, a forensic image from which we may reconstruct the specific nature of the forces unleashed by the detonation.
