“I cannot nor do I want to define my work, or suggest possible paths; these would be sterile and weakening. The work’s sudden changes of form and style are a response to the weariness of the same old thing. Instead, there is a morbid curiosity, an eagerness to surprise myself, to place improvisation and the unexpected at the top, ironically mocking notions of unity, identity and coherence: pure jazz. - It is an ongoing self portrait.” - Flavio Garciandía
Flavio Garciandía brings modernist abstraction into an irreverent dialogue with Caribbean popular culture, using painting, installation, and appropriation to unsettle distinctions between artistic sophistication and popular taste. A central figure in the experimental renewal surrounding Volumen Uno in 1981 and an influential teacher at Havana’s Instituto Superior de Arte, he helped establish the intellectual foundations of contemporary Cuban art. His self-defined Nueva Abstracción Tropical draws on kitsch, provocative titles, and the visual languages of modern painting to examine cultural authority, originality, and the unequal relationship between Latin America and the Western artistic canon