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Armando Mariño

The Anxiety of Influences

This play is a reflection on the (im)possibility of accepting diversity and the other. The fragmented body of the neoplasm—the fruit of unstable conditions—overcomes barriers, loves and denies itself and others, wanders around, forgetting its profession. It frequently and with pleasure divides, goes through dangerous palpation, questions the possibility of contact with the experience of the other. Poorly brought up but very successful, it invites us to a trans-species transition.

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In writing about "artists of the periphery," Serge Guilbaut notes, "Now that the centers are condemned to copy them too, now that the idea of originality has dissolved in mistrust, [they] have become promoters of discourses that are more in tune with postmodern reality. For a long time, their work consisted of copying and reusing concepts produced in the center. Their ability to manipulate double entendre, irony, and implied meaning has now put them in a different place." Armando Mariño is an example of this attitude that, with neither excuses nor anxieties, takes what it wants from the iconographic and cultural magma in order to produce a deconstruction of hegemonic tradition.

In Mariño's paintings and installations, there is never a lack of humor, which sometimes has crude connotations. I'm thinking of Taking Pleasure in Liberty (2003) with the pig graphically shown humping a young lady who "symbolizes" Enlightened Liberty; or another piece, Blood and Honor (2002), in which the Black man takes on a Nazi aesthetic and falls between disconcerting and vengeful. In The Anguish of Influences (2002), the head in the painting is Medusean, a "peripheral" figure suffering mutilation at the hands of an unknown Perseus: it screams while in it is reptilian hair the magisterial faces of Giacometti, Magritte, Salle, Matisse, or Chagall show a certain stupefaction. Painters! (2003) is a sort of bonfire of the vanities - as if to drown a scream in the throat while still pursuing, with delight and extreme clarity, the task of manipulating all those senses that the Center might want to control. - Fernando Castro Flórez

Curated by Alejandro De La Fuente

When

2010

About The Artist

Armando Mariño studied and later taught at the Instituto Superior Pedagógico, Havana. He lives and works in Spain and the Netherlands and is currently a resident artist in the International Studio and Curatorial Program in New York. Mariño paints in a neo-surrealist style, juxtaposing often violent historical and contemporary images.

In writing about "artists of the periphery," Serge Guilbaut notes, "Now that the centers are condemned to copy them too, now that the idea of originality has dissolved in mistrust, [they] have become promoters of discourses that are more in tune with postmodern reality. For a long time, their work consisted of copying and reusing concepts produced in the center. Their ability to manipulate double entendre, irony, and implied meaning has now put them in a different place." Armando Mariño is an example of this attitude that, with neither excuses nor anxieties, takes what it wants from the iconographic and cultural magma in order to produce a deconstruction of hegemonic tradition.

In Mariño's paintings and installations, there is never a lack of humor, which sometimes has crude connotations. I'm thinking of Taking Pleasure in Liberty (2003) with the pig graphically shown humping a young lady who "symbolizes" Enlightened Liberty; or another piece, Blood and Honor (2002), in which the Black man takes on a Nazi aesthetic and falls between disconcerting and vengeful. In The Anguish of Influences (2002), the head in the painting is Medusean, a "peripheral" figure suffering mutilation at the hands of an unknown Perseus: it screams while in it is reptilian hair the magisterial faces of Giacometti, Magritte, Salle, Matisse, or Chagall show a certain stupefaction. Painters! (2003) is a sort of bonfire of the vanities - as if to drown a scream in the throat while still pursuing, with delight and extreme clarity, the task of manipulating all those senses that the Center might want to control. - Fernando Castro Flórez

Curated by Alejandro De La Fuente

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