Dreamscaping in a Fool's Paradise

Solo exhi­bi­tion fea­tur­ing Car­los Mateu
Artist Talk: Sep­tem­ber 7, 1pm

Car­los Mateu, born and raised in Havana, Cuba, has been inspired by a rich cul­ture of art and music since child­hood. He stud­ied fine arts at the San Ale­jan­dro Nation­al Acad­e­my of Fine Art in Havana, and worked as an artist and design­er of inter­na­tion­al exhibitions.

Since com­ing to the US in 1997, he has exhib­it­ed his art exten­sive­ly, and also works as a graph­ic design­er. He was com­mis­sioned to pro­duce a series of murals, paint­ings and logos for schools, pri­vate busi­ness and var­i­ous pop­u­lar restau­rants in NYC like Guan­tanam­era, Toloache, Cuba, Café Cor­ta­di­to, Havana ​”Alma de Cuba,” and Agozár, etc.

He calls his style geo­met­ric pop. His paint­ings fuse ele­ments of cubism with real­ism, using straight lines and per­spec­tive to cre­ate a geo­met­ric and three-dimen­sion­al effect, while sub­tly deform­ing the images. Intense col­ors of acrylic are applied in lay­ers like silkscreen, cre­at­ing clean and pre­cise divi­sions between tones, tex­tured fur­ther with oil pas­tel. His sub­ject mat­ter incor­po­rates sur­re­al­ism and mys­ti­cism to reflect the Afro Cuban life and reli­gions, mem­o­ries of Cuba, his life in the Unit­ed States and his own cre­ative per­spec­tive on the world around him.

The West Harlem Art Fund is one of the 2024 Gov­er­nors Island Arts Orga­ni­za­tions in Res­i­dence.