Famed, Cuban artist Kadir López Nieves, continues his US exhibition tour with 212, a new collection at Cavalier Gallery in Manhattan, premiering June 9th, through June 18th, 2022.
An homage to the “greatest, most diverse city on Earth,” López’ solo works combine various mediums to celebrate the glory, complexity, and rich history of New York City, identified by its coveted area code “212.” His Signs collection uses vintage street signs from pre-revolutionary Cuba as a canvas to highlight influential 1960s and 1970s protagonists, including the five families in New York City’s organized crime landscape. The collection aims to tell a new story about our obsession with power and consumption, as well as serve as a mirror to the past.
“I selected signs that embody a commercialized or historical period. They were then superimposed with vintage photos from that time– whether referential or not, extracted from public archives or albums. Finally, I fused a third layer of paint,” says López. “It’s my abstract way of making sense of how history informs the present.”
López collects and compiles images and graphic information with the voracity of a historian, then allows his artistic side to shape his mediums into works of art with “strong metaphors that capture timeless themes.” As for his choice of enamel signs as a canvas? “ Emotional advertising is at the core of marketing effectiveness. A piece of high art or a high billboard? Can we elicit the same feelings from a sign as, say, the Mona Lisa? Is a painting in the Louvre more emotive than a giant billboard on I-95? That’s one of the many conversations I want to initiate.”
212 will also include Kadir’s new “Island” series of oil-on-canvas compositions depicting Manhattan, Long Island, Ellis Island, and Staten Island. These canvases incorporate López’s illuminated neon detailing. López, who worked out of his Havana studio until 2021, has a clear connection to island culture. “When you are isolated, you fight to flourish in an interconnected way,” he says. López is now dividing his time between Europe, the US and Cuba. “For decades I traveled extensively, but always kept my work studio in Cuba. But our diaspora is everywhere and we must draw inspiration from more than a fixed place and time.”
212 is López’ second US exhibit this year. His first, Signs, took place in Palm Beach and received resounding critical acclaim and media coverage. Most of the works were sold and López received numerous commissions from major collectors. Cavalier Galleries, located in New York CIty, Palm Beach, Greenwich and Nantucket, exclusively represents Kadir López in the United States and sells his work at all its galleries. Later this month, on June 23rd, López will be exhibiting at Cavalier Galleries in Nantucket, with a collection that explores the myth of the region’s settlers past and present, aptly titled She Blows.
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