A few years late … the Visual Arts Biennial arrived. It is hosted by a Museum of Modern Art in excellent condition; For years the institution had not had the funds or the support to be able to serve as a framework for the encounter that Dominican artists await. They have taken advantage of them: the Museum, inside and out, looks magnificent.
And the Biennial does not disappoint. A delay of two or three years does not affect its quality: what work of art does not last that long? There is everything and for everyone. In a biennial there is room for works that nobody understands, others that few would choose, and it also admits a dose of spectacle because the artists offer it and the art world needs it.
In this Biennial, consecrated artists coexist, students who begin, intermediate generations who settle. Some of those who started in the Diario Libre Contemporary Art Contest are already rubbing shoulders with veterans in the Museum spaces.
You can choose your favorite work; will doubt. I prefer the iron sculptures by Remberto Rondón. His “Sanity and Insanity” and the heartbreaking “Caryatids of the tropics” are impressive. Some twisted irons that in his hands become a shocking portrait, a denunciation of poverty not without heroism.
And with Ramón Calcaño’s large format, “It doesn’t matter where you come from but where you’re going”. A whole massed universe from which a young man who challenges the future tries to escape. Only. From Leonardo Durán the polyptych “Yo, Adán”. It is one of those works of which the critics say “what an interesting piece” and those of us who are not specialists think “Wow, how beautiful! I would take it home. “
It was made to wait, but it is a Biennial that you have to visit to find out what Dominican artists are working on today.
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