GUTTENBERG – Cuban-born artist Pavel Acosta is showcased in the exhibit “Present Works” at the Guttenberg Arts Gallery from June 5 through July 1, 2015, with an opening reception on June 5 from 6 to 8 p.m. and an artist talk at 7 p.m.
The works shown in the exhibition include two of Acosta’s latest works from the series “Stolen from the Met,” both being exhibited for the first time in New Jersey. In this series, the artist realizes detailed, 1:1 copies of works from the Met’s and other major museums’ collections.
“Stealing is at the very core of my work since I first started making art,” said Pavel Acosta. Born and raised in Havana with a lack of art supplies inspired Acosta to rethink what it meant to make art. With little access to affordable art materials, he began to steal dry paint chips from the crumbling city walls and the objects around him to make paintings or collages of recycled paint on paper and canvas. He called these works “stolen paintings.”
This way of surviving as an artist, he stated, was parallel to the way people need to survive in Cuba, smuggling state resources within the black market as a compensation for low salaries and scarcities. Acosta wanted to explore the boundaries between destroying or committing a crime, and creating, as well as the concepts of ethics and morality within that society.
Acosta’s move to the United States in 2010 fundamentally changed his artwork. The unrestricted access to seeing masterpieces at MoMA or The Metropolitan Museum of Art in person was startling and, paired with being able to buy any art material at any time, process altering. But he couldn’t renounce stealing. Recent works show Acosta’s source of materials is not the city anymore, but the museums. In his series Wallscape (2013 – present), Acosta interacts within museums’ permanent collection galleries. The first work in this series took place at El Museo del Barrio, NY, during its 2013 Biennial. For this work, he peeled paint directly off the wall and used the paint chips to make a reproduction of a permanent collection painting hung on the wall.
Acosta continues developing his intricately detailed process by using sheetrock panels that are mounted on a wooden structure, resembling what one finds behind a wall, and are always exhibited hanging from the ceiling, detached from the gallery walls. A QR code next to each painting allows the viewer to access the webpage featuring the original piece in the museum’s website. “My low tech works are like spirits that find their way back to their bodies through cutting edge technology,” said Acosta.
For more information contact info@guttenbergarts.org or (201) 868-8585. Guttenberg Art Gallery, 6903 Jackson St., is free and open to the public by appointment.
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