Artist's statement

Untamed boundaries

I see nature as a system poetically designed for everything to work in harmony, where every piece has its necessary purpose and where intentions outweigh responses

Last night's dream could become next morning's reality

Its the space between the apparent and the tangible that draws me. That infinite line marking the parallel nature of realities. In this sense, my works aims to traverse the rough path between the misfortune and hope of the human experience.

Limits

Inside the platonic cavern we find a group of men. They have been there since childhood, their feet and neck tied. In the same position, unmoving, they look ahead as looking back has been rendered impossible. They are men that know only of shadows. If we were to untie them, if we forced them to get up and to direct their eyes to the light, wouldn't doing this be painful? And if they were to look straight into the light wouldn't they hurt their eyes and try to escape from the pain? However, were they to withstand the glare they would come out as better men, infinitely better...imits

In the end, there are no distorted versions since they all belong to reality. Each statement (assertion) puts forth a method, whether true or not. In a way, these are my works so far: an unforeseen road without beginning or end, truths and lies that are bared in the same stage. The differences and coexistence being, in my opinion, what is truly valuable.

Distance

Distance is separation. The extent of that separation depends on the ability to recognize ourselves deep within and also within others, being able to see, or not, the pure essence that animates and connects all organisms. For me, that separation is closely linked to the notion of belonging.

Perhaps we are aware of it for the first time at the moment when the umbilical cord that linked us to our mother is severed. In the West, we may inherited this awareness of Adam and Eve. We stopped belonging from the moment we were banished from paradise. Banished and separated from our mother, we began the search for our identity, by closing the distance that separates us from ourselves. In homes and communities where adults and the elderly know who they are, where that banishment does not exist or has been healed, the search can be short.

In houses and societies where there are still many wounds to heal, people seek their identity from the gaze and perception of others. Social acceptance becomes the only form of belonging, depending on the values of that society. It depends whether the distance between each of us and our reflection is an abyss or if we can, as in the stories, take a step within our reflection to discover a universe in which we are all united.

THE GAME 

An object, created by the hand of men in order to satisfy "human needs": a chair, a table, a frame. Pieces of stories that seem overlooked and forgotten, obtain body and form to be used. Absent of sentimentalism, materials transformed into nothing, emptiness of an object to be consumed.

Wood, precious matter which embraces life itself, reshaped into something worn; ephemeral and limited in time, subject to the speed of modern life; a simple system to fill the hollowness that does not find any permanence in anything.

This is a work of redemption, of resurrection and of relapse to the essence. In the whim of calling them "stuff", and the will to push spirituality into the dead veins of discarded furniture, they become pieces that through aesthetics return to the beginning of the cycle of life.

They appear pure and fragile, waiting to be accepted or perhaps just flirting around, embracing the perpetual space and the idea of a second chance. They come alive at will and unfold arms, legs and faces excited to express and to belong to the world.

Ernesto Capdevila

Ernesto Capdevila was born in Havana, Cuba in 1970. He graduated in 1992 from the Design Institute of Havana. Capdevila continued his education in the arts at the Academy of Fine Arts of San Alejandro, also in Havana, graduating in 1997.

Capdevila worked as a member of the Experimental Graphic Workshop of Havana from 1993-1999, right before immigrating to Miami, Florida, where he continues to reside and working.

Ernesto Capdevila's work has been, and continues to be, shown in galleries throughout Europe, North, South, and Central America, as well as the Caribbean.

Exhibitions

Personal Shows

Group Shows