DESBEL ALVAREZ
Artist Statement
"I was born in Havana. I live in a humble neighborhood, where I feel and see all the time the deterioration of the city and the needs of its people. This catches my attention and it is what I bring to my work.
I am making a kind of accusation and criticism, because it affects me to see how my city ages every day and the ongoing inability to get things fixed.
Perhaps for many people it is something romantic to come to my country and photograph a building on the verge of collapse; but not for me, because I know that people live inside, that perhaps their souls are as in need as their houses."
"Graphics as an experimental medium opens up to a range of artistic possibilities and discourses. Going through various techniques and in search of a language that defines his work and aesthetics, Desbel found in collagraphy an identity and a way of working as if he were a façade mason. Thus, he takes on social and cultural problems as a catalyst for the content of his discourse. He take the deterioration of the houses to the façades of important buildings in Havana which allows you to delve into reality in a different way and access the mystery and the memory.
Memory is a permanent heartbeat in his work. Under the relentless weight of nostalgia, of what once belonged and is not longer there, a new dialogue arises with recycled wood. The construction process that requires the patience and concentration of the creator, goes through the necessity of doing more with less, reinventing his own work, working on textures and using a material that reinforces the concept. The structure will no longer be static, but a playful and dynamic set, twists and turns in the process of the materialization of his dream." - Lisday Martinez Saavedra, January 2019
