by Abisay Puentes

The development of my expressive trajectory has taken 20 years to evolve to its current phase. My current work began with a series of drawings that I began, in 1997. Today, my work contains two kinds of space; one space is visual and the other is based on my interest in music. The forms of each of the modes of artistic expression that I employ in my work – music and painting – are not necessarily intrinsically linked – because “musical forms" and “pictorial forms" do not function on the same sensory level. Nonetheless, as content, within a given work, these elements can fuse and affect an audience's perceptual sensibilities. Such a fusion of sound and image was found in the history of film in silent movies. In this sense, such films were mute but not deaf. 

As I have explored the fusion between image and sound, the work of Wassily Kandinsky has provided an inspirational model. Kandinsky's ideas have entered my referential inspiration through my absorption of his intentionality as expressed in “Concerning the Spiritual in Art," where he wrote: 
“... The most modern musicians like Debussy create a spiritual impression, often taken from nature, but embodied in purely musical form. For this reason Debussy is often classed with the Impressionist painters on the ground that he resembles these painters in using natural phenomena for the purposes of his art. Whatever truth there may be in this comparison merely accentuates the fact that the various arts of today learn from each other and often resemble each other." 
Further down, he also stated: 
“… And so at different points along the road are the different arts, saying what they are best able to say, and in the language which is peculiarly their own. Despite, or perhaps thanks to, the differences between them, there has never been a time when the arts approached each other more nearly than they do today, in this later phase of spiritual development." 
It is precisely in these concepts, as expressed by Kandinsky, that I have employed in developing the symbiotic aspects of my work. Evidently, artistic evolution since Kandinsky has continued from when he left us with these concepts. Contemporary Art has moved beyond Kandinsky's legacy as it has departed from traditional conventions of artistic process and outcome. Despite such changes, the elemental spirituality of art does not change; and it is within the parameters of this conceptual structure that I create my work. In my artistic practice and intentionality, I seek to join the visual aspects of painting to the aural space of melody or pure sound in a manner that communicates this fusion. 
All visual art can resonate with the spiritual in a manner that is intrinsically musical. This is even more possible today, as we live in an intellectual moment identified by Arthur Danto's philosophy as the Post-Historic Period, in so referencing the end of traditional historical identification of “Art" or of a concept of art, which ruled on artistic definition since the Renaissance to identify or deny artistic actualization. Danto's conceptualization of art maintained that art had entered a new phase of artistic utopia, wherein all is permitted in the name of art. Pure art as Form lost its significance, but the new significance or meaning of such art has not yet been identified. As an artist, with the ability to function within Danto's description of artistic possibilities, I seek to describe what I identify as my artistic sensibility within my artistic sensibilities and the trajectory of what I identify as my artistic intentionality. 
Lately, my work's fusion of sound and sight combines the experience of both into one expressive format, which can be experienced separately or in a combination of listening to music joined to the visual perception of interaction with painting. The meaning of the experience is found within the spectator's experience, as it is the audience that provides meaning through the aesthetic moment produced by my work. Visual images are static but music flows. Images are frozen in time but music cannot be detained and its ongoing development unfolds as time passes. In perceiving how these two aspects of artistic expression develop, someone immersed within this created world can create a mental history for the image seen, altered through the sound of the music that animates its spiritual existence. As such, the “history" or the image or its “story" is recounted by the space that exists separating the diverse realities of music and painting. Fused in my work, these two areas of perception – sound and sight - are united into a holistic experience that enmeshes the spectator in a world that is between their perception and my intention for the work's performative display. Thus, I challenge audiences to interpret and absorb the intrinsic nature of the work they perceive, that is my creative process, and the extrinsic perception of it that is the result of the spectator's experience. In so doing, my goal is to enmesh the spectator into the perceptual performativity of seeing and hearing within an altered state of existence that seeks to find a place between the material existence of painting, the sound of music and the spiritual with art.

Education:

SELF TOUGHT

Awards & Distinctions:

Award La Acacia Gallery, Blue Huron Museum, Havana, Cuba. (2008)
Award, Mirta Cerra Gallery, Havana, Cuba. (1998)
Premio, de galería Her-Car, Habana, Cuba. (1998)
 

Exhibitions:

Solo Shows
2022 (March-19)- Exhibit at the Everson Museum, Syracuse, NY, US.
2014- Exhibit at La Casita Cultural Center Gallery, Syracuse, NY, US.
2012- Exhibit at Ann Felton Multicultural Center, OCC (Onondaga Community College), Syracuse, NY, US.
2011- Exhibit at Lamar Dodd Art Center, entitled "Lamentations of Abisay" LaGrange, GA, US.
2008- Exhibit at Her-Car Gallery, Havana, Cuba
2002- Exhibit at Museo de la Ciudad (City´s Museum), Havana, Cuba
2001- Exhibit at Hermanos Saiz Gallery, Havana, Cuba.
1999- Exhibit at HER-CAR Gallery, Havana, Cuba.


Group Shows
2019- Exhibit at Arnot Art Museum: The 76th Regional Exhibition. Elmira, NY, US.
- Exhibit at Binghamton University Art Museum: Visions and Imagination, Cuban- 
American and Argentinian Art. Binghamton, NY, US.
2018- Exhibit at Cristine Frechard Gallery: INCUBATION, Pittsburg, PA, US.
2017- Exhibit at Monmouth Museum of Art: "Hope for the Holidays" art show. N.J, US.
- Exhibit at Point of Contact Gallery, collaboration with the UK artist Susan Stockwell in the project: Boite-En-Valise: Generate. Syracuse, NY, U.S.
- Exhibit at BAYart Gallery, Cleveland, Ohio, US.
- Exhibit at The Monmouth Museum of Art, January to March. New Jersey, U.S.
2016- Exhibit at Point of Contact Gallery: 40 Below's Public Arts Task Force. Syracuse, NY, US.
- Exhibit at Dowling Art Center, Syracuse, NY, US.
2015- Exhibit at Arnot Art Museum, Elmira, NY, US.
2013- Exhibit at Edith Langley Barrett Art Gallery with Juan Cruz, Utica College, NY, US.
2012- Exhibit at the Biennial: TONY, the Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, NY, US.
- Exhibit at Syracuse Stage, Syracuse, NY, US.
2011- Exhibit at “La Casita Cultural Center Gallery," Syracuse, NY, US.
2004- Exhibit at “Origenes Gallery," Havana, Cuba.
2003- Exhibit at “La Acacia Gallery," Havana, Cuba
- Exhibit at “L Gallery," Havana, Cuba
2001- Exhibition with “Proyecto Horizontal," at “10 de Octubre Gallery", Havana, Cuba.
2000- Exhibition with "Proyecto Horizontal," at "Morro Gallery," Havana, Cuba.