Wilfredo Prieto

NoguerasBlanchard is pleased to present the solo exhibition El cosmos y la realidad [Cosmos and reality] by artist Wilfredo Prieto. The presentation explores themes of perception, duality and the connection between the cosmic and the earthly. Prieto traces its origin to a practice of collecting, and creates objects by exploiting and transforming the material remains of the immediate environment with a delicate sense of humor and visual immediacy. 

El cosmos y la realidad [Cosmos and reality], the work that gives its name to the show, is a collage of common goods such as fries from McDonald's and Cuban stamps, arranged in the manner of a museum display case. Embracing a further metaphysical register, Prieto assembles a collection of minerals that create a hyperbole in the piece Con los pies en la tierra y un globo inflado [With two feet on the ground and an inflated balloon]. The minerals as earthly essence lead the viewer to the gem stones of the adjacent work El sonido del brillo cuando encandece [The sound of the glow when it flares], which placed next to a piano key produces a synesthetic perception. On this path towards the truth, we encounter the sound of the glow that shines, suggesting that sometimes the truth can be uncomfortable, even blinding. In this context, Ceniza de confeti [Confetti ashes] is presented as memento mori, symbol of the ephemeral joy and temporality even of the immaterial. El norte y el apareamiento en la primavera [The north and spring mating] shows a display case with stuffed exotic butterflies placed next to a computer fan, emphasizing the resemblance in form, light and movement. 

The practice of collecting culminates in the exhibition’s central work, El payaso del payaso del payaso [The clown’s clown’s clown], which confronts and greets the viewer with an illuminating blow: a line of 200 clown noses grimly portray a vast absence, and the way we often repeat patterns and behaviors without stopping to question their meaning or value. Whereas in previous exhibitions such as the one at Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo in 2011, that thrived in the effect created from the disparities between the works, in this exhibition the disparities are generated within each one and allude to the duality of strength in simplicity.

This text has been produced in collaboration with ChatGTP artificial intelligence, a technology that has already populated our everyday social interactions through tools such as automatic email completion. Like Prieto’s work, this text is both reality and fiction, and exposes the codes that condition the interpretation of our environment -what is artificial, what is real, and why it matters to us. The exhibition is yet another effort of the artist to subvert the way in which the everyday operates, understanding the everyday as that which conforms us by we fail to see.