LINZ.- With 25 works, the OK Linz presents the first solo and mid-career exhibitions of Cuban artist Glenda León in the German-speaking world.
Her works constantly challenge our perception of the world by visualizing the laws of nature, demanding the act of listening and contemplation or thematizing the divine dimension of mankind. It encompasses various techniques and media such as drawing, video art, installation, sculpture/object, and photography. The renunciation of anything superfluous and the fusion of natural and artificial elements testify to the artist's preference for process es. Her works move in the intimate and public realm, which illustrates her ability to give her objects new meanings through a process of manipulation, contextualization, and object association.
Glenda León (* 1976 in Havana / Cuba), lives and works in Madrid and Havana. Based on a multidisciplinary background and spiritual explorations, her practice encompasses different media and challenges our perception with unconventional materials and techniques. She presents her vision of life as a path of spiritual growth and the role of art in this process by examining the relationship between artificial and natural elements, where ordinary objects are transformed and reveal their metaphorical power.
"The meaning lies in the space between the visible and the invisible, the sound and the silence, the ephemeral and the eternal. Like magic, art is an act of transformation, which sometimes also means simply creating coincidences." Glenda León
EXHIBITION
Interpreted World (for Piano), 2024
Automatic piano, 214 hanging sheets of music with god's name in Braille, sheet music book
composition: Kiko Faxas
The names of the gods considered to be the creators of the world in all kinds of religions and cultures, are transcribed in Braille as a score for an automatic piano. The transformation of names into sounds, the disappearance of words, the return to the unnameable essence from which all beliefs originate, point to the spiritual blindness of humanity as the cause of many conflicts.
Every Flower is a Shape of Time, 2000/2024
Site specific installation of 5000 Austrian roses, 1 artificial rose
An artificial flower, which only becomes visible when the natural flowers begin to wither, invites us to reflect on the transience of existence. It is a reflection on the intertwining of the eternal and the ephemeral. On change over time, on the beauty and transience of nature as opposed to the artificial and man-made.
Jardin Interior, 2003
photo series
Flowers made from the bows of women's underwear form a private, “inner” garden, an artificial and created landscape of a temporary, feminine space in the exterior.
Talking to God, 2018
Single channel video, sound, color
A change of perspective in the scene of a Catholic church bathed in ethereal light reveals that the worshippers are not focused not on an intimate dialog with the divine, but on their brightly lit mobile phones. The video encourages reflection on the role of technology in our contemporary lives and the desacralization and decentralization of the canon of knowledge.
The Holy Bible (Pocket edition), 2016
50 US dollar bills bound in a leather-covered book
Using US dollar bills tied to the Holy Bible, she points out the hypocrisy and cynicism of people and institutions that profit from religions, and the morality of those who let money rule their lives. She criticizes the focus on the external and material, while the real work and the truly sacred lies in the inner and within us.
The International IV, 2016
Pieces of international banknotes following “The International” anthem music score on paper Nowadays, money seems to have become the reason to be and to act and therefore is the true international anthem. The work is also a call to reflect on a doctrine, such as the Marxist - Leninist one associated with “the International”, which has been replaced by the blind following of money.
Every Shape of Time, 1999‒2000
25 drawings, hair, adhesive tape on paper
Glenda León deals with the relationship to the body, using materials such as her own hair and nails or chewing gum. The hair is frozen in time as we find it on the floor, in the bathtub, or on soaps in these peculiar and ephemeral forms.
Shapes of the Instant, 2001/2024
Used soaps, hair (of the artist)
“Shapes of the Instant” is a call to value the brief moments and ephemeral details of our existence. Time and the human body are the sculptors that transform both, the soaps and hair left in them. The used soaps turned into objects of contemplation, are a provocation and an invitation to discover the beauty that lies in the discarded, which is also an important part of the human experience.
Butterfly Effect, 2023
Painting series, butterfly wing dust, oil on canvas
In chaos theory, the stroke of a butterfly's wing on a small scale can trigger a tornado far away and on a large scale. The artist transforms the dust of a butterfly's wing into an imaginary galaxy, a hurricane, an invisible light, and a flash of lightning. In a dialectical reflection on the fragility and strength of nature, the butterfly becomes a symbol of the strengthening of what we mistakenly call “weak”, yet is simply fragile.
Mirage (Acasian), 2024 (Espejismo (Acásico))
Tree branch, neon, aluminum construction
The mirroring of a found branch in neon and the similarity of their shapes prove to us that the same energy created the twig and the lightning. A connection has been made between the artificial and nature, above and below, and heaven and earth.
Addressing Clouds, 2008-2017
Single channel video, sound, color, 1:00 min
This video is about the fictional possibility of directing clouds with the necessary concentration and willpower. This phenomenon has rarely been recognized because hardly anyone observes the sky carefully. People see precise shapes in the clouds but continue to ignore their peculiar origins.
Cielo / Sky, 2009–2020/202Site
Site specific installation, Wall blue-painted and peeled off, grease
This work is a kind of inverted mural, or anti-fresco, in that it is based on the destruction rather than the creation of a painting. It recreates a wall in Havana of a similar color, the peeling sections of which the artist perceived as clouds. Clouds appear where others see only destruction, demonstrating the ability to see something positive in any situation, n o matter how difficult.
Listening (series), 2022
Graphic series, 8 parts, ink and graphite on Arches satin paper
The etchings consist of traced lines of different natural phenomena, such as the flight of a bee, the movement of ants, dolphins, and the river Nile, the shape of the mountain Fuji, lightning, veins, or clouds. The similarity of the lines hint at the existence of the same shared energy in their creation, manifested in different states of matter.
Inversion, 2011
Single channel video, sound, color, 3:00 min
The artist meticulously scrapes a dollar bill and sniffs its remains with a coca leaf in an absurd commentary on our modern addiction to making money.
Every Breath, 2015
5 channel video installation, synchronized, sound, color
Breathing is a bridge between the world and the body. Each time we inhale, we take something from the world, and every time we exhale, we give something back without a conscious act. Monumental images of the earth, the sky, fire and sea moving to the rhythm of the breath symbolize the connection between human beings and their environment, and the potential of human beings to change.
Musica Concreta
Series of objects
The interaction between sound and the visual is the subject of a series of works in which Glenda León rearranges vinyl records in Music Box II (2004), cassette tapes in blue noise (2010-2013), and piano keys in Concrete Music (Piano) (2019) The perfect cube from the keyboard or the glasses with engraved staves (awareness, 2012) materialize the intangible of music and sound.
