"Ferias y Verbenas 2" is the title of the exhibition that Los Bravú inaugurated last January 15 at the Spanish Embassy in Tokyo, as a result of the collaboration between that institution and SEISMASUNO PROJECTS. It can be visited until February 5 at 1-3-29 Roppongi, Minato-ku, Tokyo.

"Verbena is a genus of plants abundant throughout the world. There are hundreds of different species and their shapes and colors are of the most varied. In Spain it became customary to use these flowers as an ornament for festive clothing, any celebration that included a night dance was accompanied by verbenas attached to the jacket or hair. So much so that with the passage of time the people of the cities forgot the name of the plant but continued to call verbena to the dances celebrated from dusk until dawn (...)"

"(...) The artistic work of Los Bravú is the manifestation that popular rites and celebrations provide fertile ground for creativity, serve as a source of inspiration and act as a reminder of the cultural richness that can be explored through art. Marked by a strong authorial character, their works speak of personal experiences, the places they visit and the people who cross their lives. In this way their paintings navigate the thin surface of reality to enter a dreamlike universe that draws from the classical tradition and surrealist expression.

The collective formed by Dea Gómez and Diego Omil is today one of the most important referents of the new Spanish figurative painting, thanks in large part to a frenetic impulse for meticulous study and creation. The consequence of compulsively absorbing an infinite series of cultural references has resulted in a personal narrative that we now have the opportunity to see unfold through a sample of the most intimate artifacts of Los Bravú's creative process. The back of the closet of their artistic imaginary that makes evident a deep interest in mythology and symbolism, the dualities in human nature, the real and the imaginary."

Texts and photographs courtesy of SEISMAUNO PROJECTS and Los Bravú

Levi Orta has been awarded a prize by CIFO's Grants and Commissions Emerging Artists 2024 program along with Luciana Lamothe, Paula Coñoepan, Daniel Guerra, Ishmael Randall-Weeks, Glenda León, Patricia Belli and Ana Gallardo. The work he presented, National Record, is currently on display in Madrid at El Apartamento. It can be visited until February 10, 2024.  

About this installation, Levi Orta tells us that it is a project developed since 2020. Its starting point corresponds to a moment in which Cuba began to apply a group of measures that hurt the freedom of artistic expression and citizenship. He decided to hand over to the authorities the credentials that endorsed him as an artist together with a letter in which he clearly explained his motives and let it be seen that his opinion in relation to such policies was that the government understood that artists should only dedicate themselves to "moving shapes and colors". In a cynical way he decided to please the government and dedicated himself for more than three years only to "move shapes and colors". That is why he began to train professionally to compete in international Rubik's Cube competitions on behalf of Cuba. In two years he managed to break eleven national records.

For Levi Orta, assuming this attitude meant his reinvention as an artist, but also a way of positioning himself against the Art Institution. The Rubik for him became a political statement against an oppressive measure that affects freedom of expression and creation.

National Record is part of the exhibition Adiós España, a project made up of three installation-essays through which the artist presents himself as a social being to the Spanish art circuit, of which he has been an active part for the last fifteen years.

In "National Record," Levi begins to reevaluate and take charge of his own place within the technology of power: his privileges, his spaces of representation, his origins and belongings. 

Daleysi Moya