Algo deja quien se va
Reynier Leyva Novo
February 27 – may 1, 2025
Main Room, Madrid
Project curated by
Inés Plasencia Camps
With the collaboration of
Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia

The first solo exhibition in Spain of Reynier Leyva Novo, "Algo deja quien se va", can be seen in the main room of the madrid headquarters of The Apartment from 27 February to may 1, 2025. In it, the cuban artist asks in what has become a historical memory and questions the state policies that address. In a very personal way explores both its various manifestations as its ongoing resurgence in the fabric of contemporary culture. The sample, comisarida by Inés Plasencia Camps, in collaboration with the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, specifically its Department of Restoration, and it is the exhibition that you can visit during the week of ARCOMadrid, fair in which he will participate in the gallery.
The Apartment is a part of the results of artistic research recent Reynier Leyva Novo on the power. Something stops whoever is going to be articulated on the basis of two series: Global Active Dust Collection Center and El susurro de Mnemosine. The pairing of both lies in the approach of the colonial history of Cuba and, to a lesser extent, the Philippines, as well as the analysis of its reflection in the public space of the ancient metropolis. From these series, the artist analyzes the close relationship between the configuration of a particular State and the volatility of its major institutions. The Global series Active Dust Collection Center, initiated by the artist in Washington DC in may of 2024 during its Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship, is now developed in Madrid, with an op art which seeks to connect the meanings of institutional buildings and monuments located in the capital of spain that, from different perspectives, represent the State of the contemporary. Among them, the Plaza de Oriente and the Royal Palace, where the artist will perform one of their actions performative, in which it will collect the dust and essences that gravitate around this significant public space.
The artist seeks to explore the impermanence of power structures, using dust collected from a series of iconic government buildings and monuments of great significance civic including the Ministry of the Interior; the National Library of Spain; the Discovery Gardens; the Kilometre Zero and the Seat of the Presidency of the Community of Madrid; the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, European Union and Cooperation of Spain; The hug, also known as the monument to the lawyers Atocha, the work of Spanish artist Juan Genovés, among others.
Each piece, meticulously arranged on the adhesive-backed paper, to capture the subtle but persistent changes in these bastions of authority. The dust, collected from the surfaces of the buildings, it symbolizes the continuous human interactions, and environmental that these structures bear. Underlines the vulnerability of political institutions, reflecting the transient nature of the government and the political landscape in constant evolution that will be subsequently exposed in The Apartment.
On the other hand, in the series the whisper of Mnemosine, offers a continuation of its investigation on the memory of colonial Cuba and the wars in which she was involved at the end of the NINETEENTH century. The artist, in addition, it is closer to the Philippines, a land that received the same treatment, Cuba in the stories of the episodes that occurred in the year 1898. In the rooms of The Apartment, Reynier Leyva Novo will present a sort of catalogue of monuments in honor of the so-called heroes of both colonial wars. A series of drawings that have as main character to controversial historical figures, the artist has veiled with thick layers of paint in a color palette cold, and who are subsequently revealed by techniques of reflectografia infrared, own in the field of conservation and restoration of art.
In a general way the exhibition project of Reynier Leyva Novo questioned how the State of Contemporary configured hard thanks to institutions whose origin and colonial logic still manifests itself. And, above all, how our devices symbolic — fusion of the historical, political, and identity— underlying the institutional order and monumental continue to communicate, pressing and spending the night in the public space to the citizens of the TWENTY-first century inhabit on a daily basis.
PRESS CONTACT
SMI – Studio Monica Churches
+34 620 421 253


Algo deja quien se va
Reynier Leyva Novo
The narratives about the official story are held by symbols and institutions that operate in the public space in a framework of visibility, to say the least, ambivalent. So intertwined with the control devices such as the own laws and rules that dictate which are the monuments and the state institutions, which act as a transmission belt between the past and the present, between the power and the communities that they live in a city or a state. However, something is always in a blind spot, without surveillance, because it's always something left who is going. Trajectories of political imagination that does not always respond to the same regimes of visuality, but underlying layers of the perceptible. This distance between the conditions of life of the present and the glorification of the past, which is often presented as untouchable from the hegemonic powers, is revealed as a space of artistic research of the emerging alternatives to the account officer.
Algo deja quien se va it is the first solo exhibition in Spain of Reynier Leyva Novo, and in her retrace the becomings of the memory, and state policies on this in search of its forms of manifestation and rebirth. The artist presents here two series, which continues some of his most recent research, adapted and created for this exhibition, specifically in and to the Spanish context. Linked, on the one hand, the colonial history of Cuba and, to a lesser extent, the Philippines, with its reflection in the public space of the ancient metropolis, and, on the other, the configuration of the state with the volatile of their institutions.
In the first place, Dust of State (Global Active Dust Collection Center)previously produced in Washington, DC and expanded for this occasion with institutional buildings and monuments located in Madrid, spain defined from various perspectives, the state of the contemporary. If we approach this re-collection of images seemingly abstract we will see a sort of scenery, vibrant, resulting from the collection of dust and other debris of the walls, floors and sidewalks surrounding the cases of study. A perspective unusual, just human, that is far from the usual image, solemn, of these institutions, and monuments, with the presence of small micro-organisms intended to be invisible, or literally “sweeps”, now presented as the main characters in the political sphere. This opposition contrasts with the discourses about the permanence of the institutions and proposes a twist: the creation of a file of what we do not repair but that happens around. Placed as well as the institutions within the range of the ephemeral, but also in that of the random, since there is no state which is not susceptible to the passage of time and its transformations. Thus, the supposed strength of the power is shifted from the range of standing up to what is destined to disappear. The selection of these spaces has to do with what defines a state and national identity on the basis of a series of speeches often contested, but generally assimilated. In the case of the city of Madrid, the ministries and institutions involved more deeply in the rules governing the life in the framework of the liberal citizenry cross paths with spaces that embody discourses on the knowledge and history in Spain, as are the cases of the National Library or the monument The Embracededicated to the memory of the Transition to democracy in Spain, among others.
In the second place, El susurro de Mnemosine, also a continuation of a series applied to the memory colonial Cuba and its independence, connecting it both with the Spanish intervention as the importance of the united States in that process. It is also about, although to a lesser extent, to other territory, then called “overseas” as was the Philippines, inseparable from Cuba in certain narratives around 1898. In this series, a catalogue of monuments in honor of the “heroes” of the two colonial wars, understood as well from the perspective of Spanish, are veiled by layers of paint in a color palette cold, and later re-viewed by using techniques of reflectografia infrared, used in the field of conservation and restoration of art. This raises an expression of nature concept on how to operate the mechanisms of memory, both from the perspective of the collective, as well as from state policies. The story that emerges is that of a systematic forgetting of the colonial history in Spain, which, paradoxically, does not leave, however, the public space. As if those so-called heroes, blinded, wait to be seen, remembered, when someone go to look for them, considering also the imbalance between the memory of the wars of independence, and his forgetfulness in Spain.
While the State is configured on the basis of institutions of origin and colonial logic, the symbolic figures that resist obsolescence resonate as a whisper, a constant sound, but of low intensity, which affects progressively bodies with the intersecting streets and public spaces.
– Inés Plasencia Camps

works
Reynier Leyva Novo
Painting Blind 06, from the series El susurro de Mnemósine,
(Memorial to the Victims of Maine), 2025
Acrylic paint and graphite on canvas, print digitalen paper Hahnemühle 300g mounted on Dibond
157.5 x 189.5 x 6 cm (62 x 74.6 x 2.3 in)
Pintura Ciega 01, from the series El susurro de Mnemósine,
(Arsenio Martínez de Campos y Antón), 2025
Acrylic paint and graphite on canvas, digital printing on paper Hahnemühle 300g mounted on Dibond
106.5 x 159.2 x 6 cm (41.9 x 67.6 x 2.3 in)
Reynier Leyva Novo
Pintura Ciega 08, from the series El susurro de Mnemósine,
(Homenaje al Héroe Nacional de Cuba en Madrid), 2025
Acrylic paint and graphite on canvas, digital print
on paper Hahnemühle 300g mounted on Dibond
45.5 x 67 x 6 cm (17.9 x 26.3 x 2.3 in)
Reynier Leyva Novo
Pintura Ciega 02, from the series El susurro de Mnemósine,
(Eloy Gonzalo García), 2025
Acrylic paint and graphite on canvas, digital print
on paper Hahnemühle 300g mounted on Dibond
106.5 x 159.2 x 6 cm (41.9 x 67.6 x 2.3 in)
Reynier Leyva Novo
Pintura Ciega 03, from the series El susurro de Mnemósine,
(Joaquín Vara de Rey y Rubio), 2025
Acrylic paint and graphite on canvas, digital print
on paper Hahnemühle 300g mounted on Dibond
45.5 x 219.5 x 6 cm (17.9 x 86.4 x 2.3 in)
Reynier Leyva Novo
Pintura Ciega 12, from the series El susurro de Mnemósine,
(Monumento a los Repatriados de Ultramar), 2025
Acrylic paint and graphite on canvas, digital print
on paper Hahnemühle 300g mounted on Dibond
157.5 x 189.5 x 6 cm (62 x 74.6 x 2.3 in)
Reynier Leyva Novo
Pintura Ciega 09, from the series El susurro de Mnemósine,
(Monumento a los Héroes de Cavite y Santiago de Cuba), 2025
Acrylic paint and graphite on canvas, digital print
on paper Hahnemühle 300g mounted on Dibond
35 x 87.5 x 6 cm (13.7 x 34.4 x 2.3 in)
Reynier Leyva Novo
Pintura Ciega 13, from the series El susurro de Mnemósine,
(Monumento a Tomás Estrada Palma), 2025
Acrylic paint and graphite on canvas
50.5 x 128.5 x 6 cm (19.8 x 50.5 x 2.3 in)
Reynier Leyva Novo
Pintura Ciega 07, from the series El susurro de Mnemósine,
(Monumento a Tomás Estrada Palma), 2025
Acrylic paint and graphite on canvas
50.5 x 128.5 x 6 cm (19.8 x 50.5 x 2.3 in)
Process of capturing Infrared Images Reflected (IR) system with linear axes cartesian robot in the
Department of Conservation-Restoration of the National Museum Reina Sofia Art Center.
Camera Phase One iXR Mamiya Leaf Credo (80 MP) 16-bit – With digital sensor CMOS and a spectral range of
365nm – 940nm – Goal Schneider Macro 120 mm LS f/2.8 – Filters “band-pass” ZOMEi 82 mm glass,
infrared, IR950 – Radiation Source: GO ( fonts incandescent, halogen bulb 300W 3150K ) – IR Image
Process of capturing Infrared Images Reflected (IR) system with linear axes cartesian robot in the
Department of Conservation-Restoration of the National Museum Reina Sofia Art Center.
Camera Phase One iXR Mamiya Leaf Credo (80 MP) 16-bit – With digital sensor CMOS and a spectral range of
365nm – 940nm – Goal Schneider Macro 120 mm LS f/2.8 – Filters “band-pass” ZOMEi 82 mm glass,
infrared, IR950 – Radiation Source: GO ( fonts incandescent, halogen bulb 300W 3150K ) – IR Image

Reynier Leyva Novo
Polvo de Estado (Congreso de los Diputados), 2025
Dust on the adhesive-backed paper
87 x 116 cm (34.3 x 45.7 in)
Reynier Leyva Novo
Polvo de Estado (Museo Nacional del Prado), 2025
Dust on the adhesive-backed paper
87 x 116 cm (34.3 x 45.7 in)
Reynier Leyva Novo
Polvo de Estado (Jardines del Descubrimiento), 2025
Dust on the adhesive-backed paper
87 x 116 cm (34.3 x 45.7 in)
Reynier Leyva Novo
Polvo de Estado (Palacio Real de Madrid), 2025
Dust on the adhesive-backed paper
204 x 213 cm (80.3 x 83.8 in)
Reynier Leyva Novo
Polvo de Estado (Archivo General de la Administración), 2025
Diptych / Dust on the adhesive-backed paper
149 x 116 cm (58.7 x 45.7 in)
video
"The powder adheres to the facades of the power, the skin and stone from the State. Is deposited on the threshold of history, accumulating in the margins of the authority. It is not only waste: it is a vestige, it is ruin in training.
In Polvo de Estado, the time is condensed on particles torn off buildings that support the government. The Royal Palace, the Congress, the Ministry of the Interior. Places where the word becomes law, where the story is delivered and cleared. The dust, fragile and quiet, is a memory suspended in the air and caught before their dissolution.
Provisions on adhesive-backed paper, it becomes a mapping of erosion. Remains of an institutional body that, by monumental as it may seem, do not stop crumble. The work stands as an act of catching: testimony of what inevitably fades.
The power builds up. The power is rolled back.
Dust of State it has been conceived and produced especially for this exhibition, as an exploration of the impermanence of power through the powder collected in these iconic buildings. Each sample, prepared meticulously on adhesive-backed paper, bears witness to the erosion constant of these structures and the vulnerability of political institutions. What seems residue is converted into a record material of wear, showing that even the most imposing constructions are subject to the transformation and the passage of time.
The work confronts the illusion of permanence of power, pointing to his inevitable fragility and mutation."
-Reynier Leyva Novo
Reynier Leyva Novo he was born in Havana, Cuba, in 1983 and currently resides in Houston, Texas. He has participated in numerous events international, including Biennial of Havana, Venice, Pontevedra, Liverpool, Shanghai, Ghetto Biennale in Haiti, Montevideo, three-year Sorocaba, Fotofest Biennial, Triennial Aichi and 00 Havana Biennial, among others. His work is part of collections such as National Museum of Fine Arts of Cuba, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Walker Art Center, Perez Art Museum, Phoenix Art Museum, the Jordan Schnitzer museum, Museum of the Bank of the Republic, Kadist San Francisco, Museum of Fine Arts Houston, the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Bronx Museum of the Arts and Foundation, María Cristina Masaveu Peterson, among others.
program of events
Performance
Saturday 15 February / 11am
Puerta del Príncipe, Palacio Real de Madrid.
Opening
Thursday, February 27 / 18h
The Apartment (Main Room) /
Calle de la Puebla, 4,
under right. 28004, Madrid.
Talk, "Algo deja quien se va. Políticas estatales de la memoria"
-With Inés Plasencia Camps,
Isabel Piniella and Ruben of the Walnut-
Thursday, march 6 / 12h
The Apartment (Main Room) /
Calle de la Puebla, 4,
under right. 28004, Madrid.
