A R E A is pleased to present the latest photographic series by Cuban artist Adrián Fernández Milanés. The work portrays the backsides of collapsing billboards located in desolate landscapes. The complex and unexpected shapes of the sculptures function as artifacts of the utopian vision that once inspired a nation. The other sides of the structures remain powerfully and mysteriously hidden.

These photographs are inspired by the propaganda billboards, banners, and industrial sites that erupted throughout the island’s rural and urban landscapes following the establishment of socialism in Cuba. The epic and ambitious plans that characterized that stage were subsequently thwarted by a severe economic crisis, causing the abandonment of such development ideals and the deterioration of a large part of the infrastructure that was built at that time.

Each structure is based on a design previously conceived by the artist with the assistance of an engineer, an architect and a designer. The structures, evocative of M.C. Escher’s fantastical creations, are built on a small scale and then photographed with lighting and background that match the artist’s intended landscape. They are then virtually introduced into that landscape by merging the separate photos into a single image. Extensive post-production work includes the conversion of black and white tones and the manipulation of image texture, luminosity and contrast. This workflow explodes the traditional understanding of documentary photography and photography itself as a medium bound necessarily to reality, challenging the spectator instead with an ambiguous image.

This project has led Fernández to create and produce large scale installations which have been presented at the Havana’s Malecon during the past Biennial, and most recently at Gallery 301 of Montserrat College of Art in Beverly, MA.

About the artist:

Adrián Fernández lives and works in New York. He studied visual arts at the San Alejandro Fine Arts Academy (2004) and later at the Superior Institute of Arts (2010) in Havana, Cuba. He currently works as an independent artist and as a professor on Documentary Photography in Havana for New York University, Tisch School of the Arts, Office of Special Program Abroad.

Fernández has exhibited in several group and solo shows in Cuba, United States, Mexico, France, Germany, Belgium and Switzerland. His work is included in important private and public collections such as the Madeleine and Harvey Plonsker collection, Chicago, IL, USA; Lucy and Dick Glasebrook Collection, Greenwich, CT, USA; Berezdivin Collection, Puerto Rico; Seavest Collection, New York, NY, USA; Mitchell and Susie Rice Collection, Tampa, FL, USA; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX, USA; Fototeca de Cuba, Havana, Cuba; 21C Museum Hotels Collection, Robert Funcke, Frankfurt, Germany; and Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, University of Oregon, OR, USA.