Cuban post-modernity was born at the endof the 1970s with artists such as FlavioGarciandía. This Kabinett features fivepaintings by the Cuban artist, all created in thecourse of the late 1990s. Moving graduallyfrom photorealist-based imagery, Garciandíastarted to work on abstract paintings wherethe stereotypical notions of ‘being Cuban’ and‘being Caribbean’ are satirically placed in theforefront. His work, however, not only refers tothe realities of Cuban art. Both self-referentialityand the relationship to recent Western arthistory are central. With a good dose of irony,Garciandía riffs on artists of the modernisttradition, such as Clyfford Still, for example, inthe painting Clyfford Still recogiendo mangosen mi patio (de noche) (Clyfford Still pickingup mangos in my yard (at night)). Creatinga deliberately calibrated clash between thesobriety of traditional Abstract Expressionism,Minimalism, and Conceptualism, and thealready-stereotyped Caribbean mode,Garciandía creates a discourse to examine theneocolonialistic ‘otherness’ of modernism.
