Cuban artist Tonel carries the Cuban tradition of satirical illustration into an ongoing interrogation of the condition of the individual in contemporary Cuba, started by the American blockade and called to account by the revolution (now in its 41st year). Tonel has been active in the Havana art world since 1981, when he participated in the artist-organised exhibition, Volumen I. He was trained as a commercial illustrator (as were many of the Group of Seven, Andy Warhol and Ray Johnson), but in a communist country when illustration was directed toward popular images of political events, literature & film. For the Belkin Art Gallery, he is mounting an installation referring to the food crisis of the Special Period (1989-) in addition to drawings and sculpture, many of them self-portraits. Cuban curator Eugenio Valdes has chosen drawings that foreground the theme of a vexed and anxious, masculine self-image. The exhibition catalogue includes writings by Tonel. The exhibition will tour to the Wifredo Lam Centre, Havana, Cuba in January 2001. Curated by Scott Watson and Eugenio Valdés.
We gratefully thank Cubana de Aviación / Air Cubana and the UNEAC (Union of Artists and Writers of Cuba) whose support made this exhibition possible.
Tonel: Lessons of Solitude. Exhibition Catalogue.
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Exhibition catalogue from the exhibition Tonel: Lessons of Solitude at the Belkin (7 April—4 June 2000) with texts by Dannys Montes de Oca Moreda, Eugenio Valdés Figueroa Tonel, David Mateo and Orlando Hernández. [more information and purchase] -
Exhibition catalogue from The Spaces Between: Contemporary Art from Havana at the Belkin (10 January-13 April 2014) with essay by Cecilia Andersson, Antonio Eligio (Tonel) and Keith Wallace. [more information and purchase] -
Curators Tonel and Keith Wallace lead a tour of The Spaces Between: Contemporary Art from Havana. Click through for a video of the tour.
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The Belkin Art Gallery is pleased to present The Spaces Between: Contemporary Art from Havana from January 10 to April 13, 2014. Conceived by Cuban artist and critic, Antonio Eligio (Tonel) and Associate Director/Curator of the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, Keith Wallace, this exhibition focuses on the social spaces and shared sensibilities of this dynamic city, as opposed to an attempt to survey an entire nation’s artistic output. The Spaces Between explores contemporary Havana from artistic, cultural, sociological, and anthropological perspectives within a new social and economic reality that has made itself evident in Cuba in recent years. While most works seem to convey a disinterest in the political, it does take form in the imagination of the viewer, an artistic strategy that emphasizes how important the spectator has become in the making of meaning in visual art. Hence the title of the exhibition— The Spaces Between —that is, the spaces between the artwork and its reception, between the said and the unsaid, and between the past and the future. This exhibition will provide an update on Utopian Territories: New Art From Cuba that showed at the Belkin and other Vancouver galleries in 1997, and will feature works by Juan Carlos Alom, Javier Castro, Sandra Ceballos Obaya, Celia-Yunior, Ricardo G. Elías, Luis Gárciga Romay, Luis Gómez Armenteros, Jesús Hdez-Güero, Ernesto Leal, Glenda León, Eduardo Ponjuán González, Grethell Rasúa, Lázaro Saavedra González and Jorge Wellesley.
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