Luis Gómez
b. 1968, Havana. Resides in Havana.
Luis Gómez started exhibiting his works in the early 1990s as part of a new generation of artists. He studied under Juan Francisco Elso Padilla (1956-1988), a central figure in Cuban art of that decade, who was influential for his anthropologically inflected art as well as his role as an art educator.
During his years in art school and for some time after, Gómez’s work reflected his mentor’s influence in both form and concept. His pieces from this period tended to embody a search for the universal, expressing themes that were almost existential in character, such as the place of human beings in the universe and their relationship to nature. Most of the works were sculptures, a medium he studied under Elso’s tutelage and that was the foundation of his training as an artist.
From the beginning, Gómez’s work had a very personal mien. His first exhibition (1992, Centro de Desarrollo de las Artes Visuales—Center for the Development of Visual Arts, in Havana) set him apart from the rest of the artists of his generation. Early on, he showed a particular interest in installation art, which has persisted to the present day. In fact, the majority of the pieces in that first exhibition were installations, setting the pattern for what would be his most dynamic works in the future.
In a moment of rupture, Gómez set aside more traditional art media and became interested in technology as a means of expression. He started with photography, in an exhibition called Mil días (A Thousand Days, 1999), which showcased a series of near-abstract photographs, a prelude to later works. Like many contemporary artists, Gómez was attracted by the possibilities offered by technology and understood the advantages it afforded. The logical transition from photography to video went smoothly, and almost that same year he created his first video, Sin lugar (No Place).
Gómez’s art has always had a conceptual bent, and for him the ideas behind the creation of a piece are invariably more important than its execution. He is not interested in a precious finish; indeed, something closer to the opposite is true. His intention has always been to express what constitutes the theoretical underpinnings of his works.
A sizable portion of Gómez’s oeuvre are drawings, which show off his mastery of line and space. Gómez has created a considerable number of these works on paper, which are marked by the recurrence of symbols such as mandalas and spirals, which generate highly dynamic compositions.
No te preocupes (Never Mind), from 2000, is a sketch for the installation of the same name, done the same year and presented at the VII Havana Bienal. The drawing clearly illustrates Gómez’s creative processes—the way he starts integrating his installations using two and three-dimensional elements. This is one of his installations where sound is almost the protagonist, establishing a tension between the visual and the aural that he would later explore in greater depth in his videos.
Gómez is one of those contemporary Cuban artists who have successfully transitioned from a traditional approach to a multimedia one, and in whose work the usual materials have given way to technology. His art has acquired a more narrative and more explicit character, so video has become the ideal medium in which to construct his stories. Nevertheless, he continues to be obsessed with analyzing human beings in their environments—a core preoccupation that became manifest while he was still an art student.
—Irina Leyva Pérez
