03 september 2021, Manuela Klerkx
The Encrypted Paintings of Carlos Caballero
'I am lucky when I feel like being alive, going to my studio everyday'
After graduating from the Academy of Fine Arts of Camagüey (Cuba), Carlos Caballero studied at the Instituto Superior de Arte (ISA) in Havana from 2005 until 2010. After a solo exhibition at Galerie Greta Meert in 2018 and participating in a number of group shows, including one at WIELS, Singer Museum in Laren and at Tatjana Pieters Gallery, he will be exhibiting new work at PLUS-ONE Gallery in Antwerp, from September 4th October 2021.
MK How did art come into your life?
CC My mother often told me that even as a three-year-old boy, I was fascinated by the colours when they were making the decoration for my birthday celebration. Also, from a very early age I knew that I wanted to paint. My father, who is now retired, was a teacher and my mother still works as a pharmacist. They always supported me in my studies of art, but art doesn't really run in the family. I was also interested in jazz music, from the first years at the Academy of Fine Arts. For example, I love the music of John Coltrane and Miles Davis. Jazz music is very important in my live in general.
MK In his article 'Emptying the cloud', Louis De Mey describes your work as follows: 'The oeuvre of Carlos Caballero feels like a mini-universe, a world in which everything seems attuned to each other, but which we, as viewers can never fully grasp. Can you explain what he means by 'mini-universe', and do you agree with that description?
CC I regard the pictorial space of the canvas as something infinite and at the same time as something that takes place within the boundaries of the canvas. I use symbols, schematic forms and organic shapes that I paint or draw on the canvas and papers in a very meticulous way to create compositions of which some are related to a sort of encrypted and eligible texts.
MK I saw a video about your residency at Huis Van Wassenhove (part of Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens) in January 2020 in which you talk about 'confusion' in relation to your work. What do you mean by that? How does this relate to concepts that play an important role in your work such as 'alphabet' and 'perfection vs imperfection'?
CC The titles I give my paintings are like a key that gives access to the meaning of the work but the key sometimes doesn't open the right door (laughs). And that is exactly what I intend to do, because I also want the work to remain somewhat elusive and inaccessible. I was inspired by the book 'Painting as an Art' from 1987 in which philosopher Richard Wollheim stretches the boundaries of philosophy, psychology and art history to arrive at a broader, actually all-encompassing view of art. Wollheim believed that you have to involve the creative and psychological or philosophical process that underlies a work of art in order to get to the exact meaning of a work of art.
MK How does a work arise in your head and how do you proceed once an idea has matured?
CC An idea can be created by all sorts of things, for example by aligning shapes that I discover through working with Photoshop and Illustrator. But many ideas were born from the practice of drawing in my sketchbooks (‘diaries’). I then proceed to look for the right colours to arrive at a certain sensibility befitting those shapes and compositions. The presentation, the arrangement of the individual or duplicated elements, are the most important. In some way, they are like a wild horse that you should not rein in by wanting to control everything but by understanding why it behaves a certain way. Like Agnes Martin, I look for perfection in the imperfect, the not entirely controllable.
MK You come from Cuba and have been living in Ghent for a number of years now. You have attended art school and studied art history in Havana. Belgium is a country of great painters, both past and present. What is the influence of both countries, cultures and languages on your work?
CC In Cuba, the emphasis was on the narrative aspect both on the graphic education and the art academy. The approach was very classical. With an emphasis on the figurative. I found that less and less interesting. Many things were new to me here in Ghent. I had to familiarise myself with a new culture and new people. In addition, I had to learn a new language in order to communicate. With my work I am not looking for answers, rather I want to raise questions. Confusion is a good basis for that.
MK What can you tell us about the coming exhibition at PLUS ONE Gallery?
CC I am developing a kind of ‘new language’, a sort of unknown alphabet with no fixed number of characters and no legible meaning. The works I will show are part of an ongoing process. I created them in 2020 and will present them in dialogue with recent works.
Carlos Caballero, Row, 2020, Plus-One Gallery.
