Description

GUSTAVO DÍAZ SOSA

Sagua la Grande, Cuba. 1983

Gustavo Diaz Sosa registers with strokes, pigments and paper a transparent graphic identity in terms of references and positioning. In his pieces- paintings on paper or canvas, and in his notes or sculptures- one finds representational strategies inherited from Barceló or Tàpies, the colour palette and dramatism of Kiefer, the anonymous crowds of Juan Genovés, and the slow departure from these legacies towards a retro-futuristic archaeology, with notes from the steampunk universe- a current which emerged as a literary sub-genre and has increasingly been transported via visual imagery- where steam power is still predominant, and architecture rises as utopian.

In his pieces, Díaz Sosa articulates a lost, anonymous, global, surrendered, and desperate society amid a system which presumes to exist as a Democracy. His characters run aimlessly, looking only for doors or ways past the monumental walls that keep them trapped in their worlds of bureaucratic and established rules. Like sheep they walk in flocks trying to save themselves from the others. This is why Díaz Sosa creates these compositions where the man is miniaturized in front of the laws and the legends implanted in the roots of the human nature. Religion, myths, politics: these are all tools to remember how fragile the human is in the face of Power.

He has won several awards in Spain, and his artworks are part of several private collections in China, Germany, Singapore, USA, Canada, France, Belgium, The Netherlands, Italy, UK, Spain, Switzerland, Portugal, Austria, Liechtenstein.