Art World Chicago

About carlosbarberena

I have had solo shows in Costa Rica, Mexico, Nicaragua and United States of America, and my work has been shown in various Art Fairs, Art Biennials, Museums and Galleries in many places including Argentina, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Costa Rica, Germany, Italy, Spain, USA, Mexico, Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic and Venezuela. I have created many installations in public spaces in Costa Rica, Nicaragua and Venezuela. My work is included in private and public collections, among them The International Exlibriscentrum, Stedelijke Museum in Sint-Niklaas, Belgium, the Lia Bermudez Museum in Venezuela, The Printmaking Workshop (Taller de Formación y Producción Gráfica), in Patzcuaro, Mexico, the National Gallery (Galeria Nacional) of Costa Rica, the Cultural Museum of the Caribbean (Museo Cultural del Caribe) in Venezuela, the Praxis Gallery in Nicaragua. Artist’s statement. Since 1990, art has given me the freedom to travel over the ocean of my memories, permitting me to express my sentiments and through this, dig deeply into the vastness of human knowledge, knowledge which has helped me to better understand the world that surrounds us. For me art is a powerful form of communication, which I employ to make reflections and question the issues that we live in our contemporary society, the fears, the desires, the hopelessness, and the nonsense With my work, I seek to be a vector of change, collecting images that pertain to our collective memory and that, in certain form, make reference to painful events in the history of my country and of the world. I hope never to become inactive nor esthetically dead before the period in which we are living. I hope to react without fear in order to say what needs to be said in the moment in needs to be said. However, because of this, some, related to the infrastructures that make art a business, will try to curtail my freedom by censuring my work. Over the last three years I have been working on different series of prints. “Años de Miedo” This Print Portfolio is a homage to the victims of war, based on my memories and the collective historical memory of my country (Nicaragua) in the decades of the 70's and 80's. But, at the same time, this does not mean that it is limited geographically, because it is the reality in many countries at present. This Portfolio is presented as a manner of reflection about war and its effects and how these memories and fears affect our lives not only physically but also in psychological terms. “Master-Prints” In this series I employ the process of appropriating and varying “Master Pieces of Art,” using at times both their titles and compositional strategies but inserting contemporary imagery to create new works. These pieces reflect contemporary issues such as environmental pollution, exploitation of natural resources, human rights issues, violence, labor rights, wars, and the use and abuse of power. My selection of master pieces was not entirely random: with most, I chose pieces which reflected contemporary issues during the period in which they were produced. I researched the ideas behind each artist’s piece, the ways in which each artist dealt with the contradictions and hypocrisy of these issues. Then in some, I inserted contemporary issues into them that fit with the complex imagery of each. In others, where the message of the work was particularly clear and widely understood, I introduced new, contradictory ideas.