Decreto 349 | Cabrera Montejo, Martinez Barreto, Torras Casas

Introducing Cuban artist Ariel Cabrera Montejo alongside Spanish artists Concha Martinez Barreto & Javier Torras Casas. Investigating history & memory through figurative painting & installation.

Cuban artist Ariel Cabrera Montejo makes drawings, watercolours and oil paintings that serve as a segue to another time and another place, whilst operating very much within the contemporary arena. Stylistically, Cabrera Montejo’s ‘La Tregua Fecunda’ series suggests French fin de siècle painting. Exuberant brushstrokes depict man and woman at leisure, cavorting and experimenting. The title La Tregua Fecunda - The Fertile Truce - substantiates this notion. However, the term refers to the interwar period in Cuba between 1878 and 1895, after which Cuba regained independence from their Spanish colonial rulers in the Cuban War of Independence (1895-1898). With this in mind, Cabrera Montejo’s depictions of jouissance become redolent of a debauched, military interlude where the affirmation of life is expressed via pleasure.

In Spanish there is no distinction between the definitions of history and story. This fusion of meaning is encapsulated by Spanish artist Concha Martinez Barreto’s work. Martinez Barreto emphasizes not the grand lineage of canonical history, but rather small, personal stories that might subvert official, linear narratives. Her finely painted scenes are derived from collected, anonymous photographs and so can be considered a version of history painting, but Martinez Barreto prefers to focus on the notion of memory and its capabilities as well as its fallibilities.

London based Spanish artist Javier Torras Casas explores personal and objective histories in his mixed media installations. Combining hand worked organic materials such as clay with blown glass and collected industrial objects, Torras Casas makes work that proposes correlations between natural and manufactured; durable and fragile; historical and new.

The event will take place at CHARLIE SMITH