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by Lillian Guerra, Ph. D.

“My painting is filled with words, only they are all silent words,” says the Cuban artist Manuel López Oliva, rising from a stool in his Havana studio and punctuating his remarks with deliberate, subtle movements of the hands. “It is not a traditional form of painting, but one that has an open signification, and the texts it conveys or cites generate their own visual legend, their own iconography or image, that is, the text acquires its own expressive autonomy within the work, an autonomy that is also poetic.”*

Standing before any image in this collection of López Oliva’s work, it is easy to see what he means. Woven of vibrant, highly decorated strands of color that enlace, delineate and extend from the iconic faces and bodies of figures that stand at their center, these deeply textured paintings reveal themselves in terms that are both strange and familiar, mysterious yet decipherable. Paradoxical symbols encode a diversity of meaning that lies just below the surface of each canvas, both within and beyond easy grasp.

The viewer is drawn to a wealth of emotions and multiple narratives embedded in an almost obsessive layering of paint. Pain, remorse, hubris, desire, wonder, delight, greed and even anger emerge from their shapes. One feels as much called to look into the theatrical, semi-tropical landscapes of the world that López Oliva creates as at them. Peopled by taut, often statue-like characters, the stages and scenery that form the lush background for these visual narratives are surprisingly fluid, set in motion by tiny mechanical brushstrokes that embellish borders, eyes, and bodies, imparting life through swirling, cascading hues.
 

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