Rafael Pérez Alonso
Al Dente
2021

About the Item

Rafael says of his work… "The damn circumstance of water everywhere..." Born and raised on an island like Cuba, with all its peculiarities, my work borders on an obsession with themes such as insularity, identity and freedom. I frequently make both historical and everyday symbols my own to describe and question the environment that surrounds me through work with a marked social cut. I make art with any resource and/or material within my reach while taking advantage of the energy of recoverable objects and mixing them with traditional and contemporary supports and technologies. ⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯ Rafael Pérez Alonso, a self-taught plastic artist, was born in Havana, Cuba, in 1965 in a neighborhood called El Vedado. He grew up near the sea, which from a young age gave him a clear awareness of the insularity and isolation of his reality. He was a restless child and has always liked to draw and assemble things. The son of working-class parents, during his childhood and early youth he experienced first-hand the austerity and effervescence typical of the Cuban revolution. In the early 1990s, a very difficult time in the country from a political and economic point of view, he began working in advertising, this being his first formal approach to the medium. His first exhibition, “The Principle of Uncertainty”, in 2000, at the age of 35, gave way to his frequent participation in competitions and to exhibiting regularly on gallery circuits. The theme of insularity, and his concerns about identity and its conflicts, led him to win the Grand Prize of the Salon of the City of Havana in 2002. The contestant piece was a triptych of drawings, with the royal palm as center, entitled "Who was going to tell Karl Von Linné?". The Cuban national tree, represented outside of its usual and official context, became one of the symbols that the artist used and uses frequently in his work. In this way he began to incorporate symbols of his reality to express his concerns of a marked social nature. The royal palm, the flag, the sea, the city, its buildings, its cars, the people with their hopes, their conflicts and their fantasies, all within an island, are present and largely define his work. Rafael Pérez Alonso is a multifaceted artist who, with drawing and sculpture as basic tools, uses different supports and techniques with ease. He personally executes all his works and has a wide range of expression. He currently lives and works between Havana and Madrid

Creator:

Rafael Pérez Alonso (Cuban)

Creation Year:

2021

Dimensions:

Height: 41.74 in (106 cm)Width: 24.41 in (62 cm)Depth: 3.15 in (8 cm)

Medium:

Canvas,Wood,Paper,Found Objects

Period:

21st Century

Condition:

Gallery Location: