Vladimir Martinez

His constant search, in all orders, makes him a restless creator, one that is difficult to classify within a trend. Since his first works, and up to the most recent ones, there is a dynamic and coherent symbiosis between figuration and abstraction. His characters and the leitmotivs that distinguish him belong to the universe of the first one: hoes, machetes, stamps –with the words “cancelled” or “paid” – and screws. Obliged parentheses are to be made here to explain that these have not been randomly chosen symbols, but an eloquent metaphor of what he is: someone who defends, at all costs, his farmer’s roots, a vitality that he needs to not get lost in the urban intricate workings. Abstraction, on its side, is manifested at times from the way he works on the backgrounds (though at other times, so as to not take prominence from what happens on the first plane, he chooses neutral scenarios) and in the apparently unconnected associations of diverse elements. In one or another piece, this last resource has reached such connotations that, without hesitation, one could talk about the supremacy of abstraction. Another constitutive element of his rhetoric is the expressive nature he provides to the extra-artistic materials: jute or other cloths, racks, bottles, cans, cutlery, cases, barb wire, flowers, just to mention the most recurrent materials within a very long list. In this way, the collage becomes, rather than a privileged technique, the vehicle that allows him to transit from painting to installation. And it seemed that experimentation is the center of his creative work, but it isn’t. This privileged place belongs to the man, understood as the gendus, as the artist himself and, more recently, to José Martí. And how was this not going to be a constant presence, if the topics that interest him the most have him as the center? If in previous series he was declaring his concern about some of the flaws that endanger the human species, in the one he was been focused on since 2014, he proposes the rescue of the ideals of Cuba’s National Apostle to construct a better society that has been so many times promised and that is much farther, at times. The treatment he gives to Martí results symptomatic, because the keys to not making mistakes in that attempt is comprised in it: the authentic knowledge of Martí’s ideas and his demystification. The work included in the CubaPLUS collection is precisely within this more recent line of work. Different from the other pieces that are part of this series, he has represented here one of the most spread representations of the Maestro, with whom he is completely identified, a fact that is patented through the farmer’s hat and the machete, two of the elements he uses to represent himself.