Featured Artists

William Pérez is one of Cuba’s most influential contemporary artists. He is an illustrator, sculptor, and installation creator. He is known for making statements about the Cuban identity by using a variety of materials in different ways. As one who sees himself as an innovator, Pérez is always reinventing himself through his discovery of new techniques as evidenced by his most recent project, Torn Canvass (2022).

In the inaugural Torn Canvass process, debuted at the Cuban Artist Fund’s Manhattan studio, William created an original red drawing on canvass (Torn Canvass No I) which he later cut into 60 segments. William describes Torn Canvas No I as his first work to live two lives: “…it dies and reincarnates itself, leaving behind the memory of what it was to multiply itself into 60 fragments that each have their own lives and destinies. Torn canvas No I is a work that focuses on the event and makes the client the custodian of its existence: the opportunity to be custodians of the documentation of the work from the beginning of its gestation until the moment of its transformation turns the client into an accomplice who participates in the work's transcendence. In a general sense, Torn canvas No I, like the great authors of humanity, transgresses itself and focuses its essential objective on the transformative action of creation.”

Now based in the NYC area, William Pérez graduated from the San Alejandro School of Fine Arts in Havana, in 1986. He is a member of UNEAC (Cuban Artists and Writers Union), the Hermanos Saíz Association of young artists and CODEMA (Council for the Development of Monumental and Environmental Sculpture). He is also a founder of Grupo Punto, a group of young sculptors in Cienfuegos. As part of this group, he has exhibited his sculptures in public spaces in Cuba and abroad, including the project Sobrecarga (Overload) at the International Press Center in Havana, during the 6th Havana Biennial in 1997. He has been the recipient of several awards in Cuban art competitions and had more than fifteen solo shows, including Soul cartography at Villa Manuela Gallery in Havana (2012); Living together at the Center For Cuban Studies in New York City (2011); Juego para adultos (Adults Game) at the Wilfredo Lam Center for Contemporary Art in Havana (2002); Utopias del Caribe (Utopias From the Caribbean) at the Gothaer Kunstforum Gallery in Cologne, Germany (1997); and Dibujo de pequeño formato (Small-Format Drawings) at the CINTERMEX Art Gallery in Monterrey, Mexico (1993). In 1999 he served on the jury for the National Visual Arts Award in Havana. Pérez has taken part in more than one hundred group shows, including El objeto esculturado (The Sculptured Object) at the Center for the Development of Visual Arts (1990); the first Salon of Contemporary Cuban Art at the National Museum of Fine Arts (1995) and the Second Salon at the Convent of Santa Clara (1998), all in Havana.

Known for his large format blurry paintings with dotted texts and his endless investigation into the structure and language of an artwork, Raúl Cordero has successfully merged figurative painting and text-based conceptual art throughout his career. Exhibiting in museums and galleries around the world, while establishing a very personal universe that explores the visual manifestation of language and investigates the cognitive links between “looking at” and “reading” art.

His work can be seen in public collections around the world, including the Musée National D’Art Moderne Centre Pompidou in Paris, France; Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), The Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles (MOCA), The Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, The Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM) and the Museum of Art Fort Lauderdale, in the United States of America; El Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, in Cuba; The Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst (SMAK) in Gent, Belgium; El Centro Atlántico de Arte Moderno (CAAM) and Museo Extremeño e Iberoamericano de Arte Contemporáneo (MEIAC) in Spain; among many others.

Born in Holguín, Cuba, María de los Àngeles Rodríguez Jiménez later migrated to New Orleans, Louisiana. Her current work focuses on creating offerings, such as objects, happenings, and performances. These offerings emphasize different modes of translation on how diasporic bodies navigate through space in order to preserve a culture and an identity.

Jiménez's work is focused on questions pertaining to the body as a temporal vessel, the spirituality of objects, and material symbolism. Her intention is not to anthropomorphize the organic and industrial materials that she works with, but rather to imbue the material with meaning, animating it in order to render something that resembles both flesh and feeling.

Moving between the body, object, and space, Jiménez’s offerings relate to ritualistic practices with a primary interest in how they have the capacity to mirror the undefined borders of an identity that cannot easily be contained within established categories. Her research on the Yorùbá belief system, and all its translations across the diaspora, has been a pivotal force in defining her understanding of the art object as something that possesses a spiritual power that can act as a form of resistance.

Jiménez held her first solo exhibition, Ojalá, at David Castillo Gallery in Miami, FL. in April 2019. She received a BFA from The Cooper Union, NY, in 2015 and an MFA from Yale University, in 2020. Jiménez attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine, in 2016 and the SOMA Summer Program in Mexico City, in 2019. Her upcoming projects include a Fulbright Fellowship to Salvador da Bahia in Brazil, in 2021. Jiménez is represented by David Castillo Gallery, in Miami.

Born in Cuba and based in Mexico, Angel Ricardo Ricardo Rios creates massive paintings which often blend organic, vegetal forms with allusions to the erotic in fantastic displays of sensual excess. Expressed in vibrant colors with a quick, sure hand, or made using his body to apply paint, these expressionist and neo-baroque explorations appear part abstraction and part dreamscape, recalling the theatrical presence celebrated in the Spanish Baroque.

Rios is also known for his sculptures that resemble oversized furniture and which often includes similar images to the ones found in his paintings. According to the Cuban art critic Tamara Diaz Bringas "Rios’ “drawings, paintings, and sculptures are characterized by excessive dimensions, a surplus that goes beyond any container. According to a centrifugal movement, shapes tend to aim outwards, transgressing their own borders.”

Rios has exhibited at numerous museums and galleries internationally, including Museum of Talavera, Puebla, Mexico; El Museum Gallery, Bogota, Colombia; Lucia de la Puente, Gallery, Peru; El Chope University Museum, DF, Mexico; Pradilla Gallery, Madrid, Spain; Jacobo Carpio Gallery, Costa Rica and Nina Menocal Gallery, DF, Mexico, among other venues. His work has been showcased at many international art fairs and biennials including the Havana Bienal, the National Biennial of Visual Arts in Yucatan, and the Rufino Tamayo Painting Biennial, Casablanca Biennale among others.

Carlos Estévez’s work is animated by a deep interest in questions of human spirituality. His stated goal is to use his work to reveal the invisible realm to the spirit that lies hidden beneath the visible world, a process that he refers to as an alchemical, metaphysical transformation of mystery into knowledge. The imagery that populates his paintings, drawings, sculptures, and installations bears a dreamy, child-like quality, with recurring references to marionettes, automatons, fantastical architectures, cosmic geometries, angelic beings, and strange, chimerical creatures.

A recipient of the Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters & Sculptors Grant, the Cintas Foundation Fellowship in Visual Arts, and the Grand Prize in the First Salon of Contemporary Cuban Art in Havana, Estévez’s work have been presented at the National Museum of Fine Arts, Havana; Tucson Museum of Art, Arizona; The Patricia and Phillip Frost Art Museum at Florida International University, Miami; Center of Contemporary Art, New Orleans; Lowe Art Museum at Miami University, Florida; and the Stoors Gallery at University of North Carolina Charlotte. His work has been showcased at many international art fairs, biennials, and group exhibitions including the 6th and 7th Havana Biennials; the 1st Biennial of Martinique; Arizona State University Art Museum in Tempe; Pérez Art Museum Miami, Florida; Maison de l’Amerique Latin, Paris, France; and Casa de América, Palacio de Linares, Madrid, Spain.

Estévez’s work is included in numerous prestigious collections, such as those of the National Museum of Fine Arts, Havana; Museum of Fine Art, Boston; The Ludwig Forum, Aachen, Germany; The Bronx Museum, New York; Perez Art Museum Miami, Florida; Drammens Museum for Kunst of Kulturhistorie, Norway; Tucson Museum of Art, Arizona; Denver Art Museum, Colorado; Yale University Art Gallery, Connecticut; Arizona State University Art Museum, Arizona; Fort Lauderdale Art Museum, Florida; The Patricia and Phillip Frost Art Museum at FIU, Florida; The Mint Museum, North Carolina; BNY Mellon Art Collection, New York; and The Lowe Art Museum, Florida.