Wilfredo Prietosmart gum, 2008

chewing gum

variable dimensions

About the artist

Characterized by an almost shocking simplicity, Wilfredo Prieto's sculptures and installations function as tools for exploring social and political issues with a poetic sensibility. His work questions the underlying structures of contemporary culture and reflects on consumption, society, and thought systems themselves. Although Prieto initially trained as a painter, his work eschews classification within a specific medium. While some of his projects are very technically ambitious, the majority of his actions and gestures occupy extremely subtle territory, inviting a certain distancing from everyday experience. Appropriating from the world around him, the artist uses what is at hand to give form to radical, precarious and fragile gestures. His ideas, which function as open metaphors or narratives, are translated into the language of familiar objects and materials. Standing against contemporary society's oversaturated, frantic rhythms, Prieto proposes communicating with the essentials: even when it risks going unnoticed, the simplest thing can often be the most compelling. Wilfredo Prieto studied at the Escuela Profesional de Artes Plásticas in Trinidad, Cuba, from 1992 to 1996, afterwards attending the Instituto Superior de Arte in Havana from 1998 to 2002. During this period, he was a member of the artist collective Galería DUPP (Desde Una Pragmática Pedagógica), with whom he received the UNESCO Prize for the promotion for the Arts in 2000. He participated in residencies at Headlands Center for the Arts, San Francisco (2015); Gasworks, London (2008); Le Grand Café, St. Nazaire, France (2007), and Kadist Art Foundation Residency, Paris (2005).

About the artist

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