Abel Barroso

ABEL BARROSO (Pinar del Río, Cuba, 1971).
Untitled. 2008.
Acrylic on board.
Signed.
Attached certificate issued by the artist.
Measurements: 66.5 x 86.5 cm; 70 x 90 cm (frame).

Graduated from the Instituto Superior de Arte de la Habana in 1995, he attended scholarships at "Banff Centre for the Arts", Alberta, Canada and at the University of South Florida. Barroso is part of a generation of artists who aesthetically renewed Cuban engraving in the early 1990s, transforming the traditional woodcut technique into three-dimensional objects. The sense of identity in his work gains strength since 2008 with the exhibition 'Se acabó la guerra fría a gozar con la civilización' at Promo-Arte, Tokyo. Barroso seeks social involvement by giving the work a human dimension but, ironically, this is divided between the fractured spaces of his labyrinths, bridges and walls. Borders that remind us of the differences between real and mental cities (El Dorado). In 2011 he will exhibit for the first time in France with 'Murs réels, murs virtuels' and will return to Europe in 2012 where he will have his first solo exhibition at Michel Soskine Inc. in Madrid. In the years 2013 to 2015 in addition to making several solo exhibitions in the USA and Japan, he will participate in numerous exhibitions that relate him to artists working on concepts related to the transience of the human being in a bounded and delimited framework. His work will be exhibited at art fairs such as Art Brussels, Arco, Palm Springs Fine Art Fair, Art Miami or Art Lima. In 2017 he will be one of the main members of the Cuban Pavilion, 57th Venice Biennale curated by José Manuel Noceda Fernández. His work is frequently exhibited in the United States, Latin America, Japan and Europe. He completes prestigious collections such as MoMA (USA), Whitney Museum, (USA), Bacardi Foundation (USA), Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes (Cuba), Centro de Arte Contemporáneo Wifredo Lam (Cuba), Minneapolis Art Museum (USA), in the 55th and 57th editions of the Venice Biennale, Banff Centre for the Arts (Canada) and Federal Reserve Collection (USA), among others.