JASSIEL PALENZUELA

Cuban visual artist with a work linked to pop aesthetics and videogames

Through the juxtaposition of images he recreates a highly postmodern universe charged with a critique of the  Cuban government's propaganda and indoctrination. Graduated from the San Alejandro Academy of Fine Arts in 2008, he presents a work in constant evolution, a journey that the artist has defined as from ISMO TO POP and from POP TO POP. 

 

His work, close to Pop, recalls the 8-bit aesthetics of the classic videogames of the '90s.His reality, marked by a tense Cuban socio-political context, directly influences his pieces. Hence, his work echoes social, existential and political questions. His work aims to incite arbitrariness, and to hide controversy. It is a speech that uses the parable and the trickery of the metaphor to ironize about power and confront , from a false naivety, the triumphalist atmosphere of official speeches. From that apparent naivety, he seeks to demystify the cuban utopia and to ironize the POPulist rhetoric of the media, making us vomit rainbows, cry stars and ooze glitter.  Cuba exports an image abroad that the artist has defined as #candyislandia and #magickingdom because of its sweet and populist discourse that has been repeated incessantly by the official media, controlled by the government as part of its indoctrination and control of the masses. However, the reality inside the country is very different ( #dulcedistopia). His most recent work harshly questions issues such as power, totalitarianism, authoritarianism, militarism, censorship, indoctrination and official propaganda in the Cuba.

 

Jassiel Palenzuela has participated since 2012 in numerous group exhibitions in Cuba in art galleries such as Galería Carmelo Gonzáles or Galería Wifredo Lam, and solo exhibitions such as Pinturas Inweekend in Mexico at Galería Covarrubias, or Horizontes de Eventos at the Centro Provincial de Artes Plásticas y Diseño de La Habana, among others.