Rossmut Gallery November 16th, 2017
LUIS GOMEZ
SPARRING PARTNER
curated by Michela Casavola 
PRESS RELEASE
Title: Sparring Partner
Artist: Luis Gómez
Curator: Michela Casavola
Opening: Thursday, November 16, 2017 at 7 pm
Place: Rossmut Gallery – Via dei Reti, 29/b Rome Exhibition period: November 16, 2017 – February 15, 2018
Info: www.rossmut.com – info@rossmut.com – telephone and fax number +39 06 5803788
Luis Gómez –after representing Cuba twice (in 2001 and 2015) at the Venice Biennale and after participating in the great exhibition on Cuban art at the PAC in Milan (2016) and the recent solo exhibition that the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes of Havana dedicated to him– has landed in Rome, at Rossmut Gallery, for his first important Italian solo exhibition entitled Sparring partner and curated by Michela Casavola.
He uses installation, video, photography and painting with the aim of confronting art with society and the inevitable power relations. He investigates the relationships and forms of consumption in the art world and sometimes draws attention to peculiar aspects relating to the commodification of artworks and of the artist himself. Gómez's art draws its inspiration from a complex thought, which concerns different practices and types of knowledge and originates in a variety of disciplines: from sociology to literature, from political economy to technological and communication researches. It fluctuates between relativism and fiction, collective imaginaries and false truths.
Gómez, who has always lived and worked in Cuba, moves through the drifts and contradictions of contemporary art. He focuses on the problem of artists' intellectual weakness and on the loss of a personal cultural heritage, which is the starting point. He reiterates, in this connection, how difficult it is for art to be authentic, because it is dependent on the taste of multi-millionaire patrons –who are the owners of Museums and Foundations– and tied to the elite circuit of major art galleries, which have always regarded Cuban art as exotic. In some cases, there is no analysis and no discussion. It is mainly, but not exclusively, within this framework that we can find the essence of the project Sparring Partner.
Luis Gómez, by acting as a "sparring partner", experiments with a discontinuous and marginal discourse; he is aware that he "master[s] neither of time nor the future" and conscious of the "limitedness of all prediction" (Gadamer). He says: "Personally, I don't believe an art that defends a social or political ideology exists in a world where monetary interchange exists. Since this exchange of money is considerable, there can be no complete and disinterested ideological truth".
On the occasion of the exhibition, new and site-specific works will be displayed and a new catalogue will be published by Rossmut and NFC edizioni.
(Michela Casavola)He uses installation, video, photography and painting with the aim of confronting art with society and the inevitable power relations. He investigates the relationships and forms of consumption in the art world and sometimes draws attention to peculiar aspects relating to the commodification of artworks and of the artist himself. Gómez's art draws its inspiration from a complex thought, which concerns different practices and types of knowledge and originates in a variety of disciplines: from sociology to literature, from political economy to technological and communication researches. It fluctuates between relativism and fiction, collective imaginaries and false truths.
Gómez, who has always lived and worked in Cuba, moves through the drifts and contradictions of contemporary art. He focuses on the problem of artists' intellectual weakness and on the loss of a personal cultural heritage, which is the starting point. He reiterates, in this connection, how difficult it is for art to be authentic, because it is dependent on the taste of multi-millionaire patrons –who are the owners of Museums and Foundations– and tied to the elite circuit of major art galleries, which have always regarded Cuban art as exotic. In some cases, there is no analysis and no discussion. It is mainly, but not exclusively, within this framework that we can find the essence of the project Sparring Partner.
Luis Gómez, by acting as a "sparring partner", experiments with a discontinuous and marginal discourse; he is aware that he "master[s] neither of time nor the future" and conscious of the "limitedness of all prediction" (Gadamer). He says: "Personally, I don't believe an art that defends a social or political ideology exists in a world where monetary interchange exists. Since this exchange of money is considerable, there can be no complete and disinterested ideological truth".
On the occasion of the exhibition, new and site-specific works will be displayed and a new catalogue will be published by Rossmut and NFC edizioni.
