Carlos Rene Aguilera Tamayo was born in Santiago de Cuba in 1965.  In addition to exhibiting widely in Cuba, he has also shown his work in New York, the Dominican Republic, throughout Eastern and Western Europe and Latin America.  In 1996 he won a gold medal at the Third Caribbean and Central America Biennial in Santo Domingo. 

Day Cero by Carlos Rene Aguilera
Tamayo, $3,675

From the beginning of his professional career Aguilera has been investigating the ongoing struggle between the will to create order and the countervailing forces of chaos.  His use of color is a new development.  Prior to 1998 most of his work was in black and white because he did not want color to distract from his ideas.  However, he remains conservative in his use of color.   Greens and blues are dominant in most of the backgrounds of his paintings while the figures of the foregrounds are generally rendered in pinks and white. 

Aguilera is a warrior was well as a painter.  He is a “warrior” in the sense that we use the word to refer to the fighting men of the classic epics and romances of the early Greeks and Anglo-Saxons and to the great Native American chiefs.  To call these men “soldiers” would be inappropriate.  A warrior is a leader who fights to advance his cause with his spirit as much as with his weapons.  Aguilera’s paintings record his battles as a patriot and as an artist.

The Flood, by Carlos Rene Aguilera
Tamayo, GR105-CU,$3,675

Another counterpoint to the bear is Aguilera’s use of the angel.  The angel ideally possesses both physical prowess and spiritual fortitude.  Sometimes he morphs the angel into a modern day gladiator on a skateboard, other times the angel becomes Icarus whose wings made of bulletproof Kevlar are ironically riddled with bullets or as an African warrior with his face inside a polar bear skull (reminiscent of the Aztec eagle warrior).

One of his most epic paintings is called “The Flood” and on one level it is a description of the political situation in Cuba today.  The green background is stamped with globular shapes with tails that can represent raindrops, suggest images of falling fruit, even sperm.  The four figures are four responses to the political crisis facing Cuba.  The polar bear is sitting down, indifferent to the raising water and even the bullet-like projectile at his rear.  There is a human figure that has climbed a tree to escape the flood.  A mechanical horse is rearing up on its hind legs in a panic.  But the focus of the painting is the Mambi figure with a sword and a long oar that is clearly preparing to launch a boat, not to come to Miami, but to ride out the flood and continue to build an independent Cuba.  (A Mambi is a soldier from Cuba’s independence struggle in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries). 

At ElCoquiGalleries.com we are pleased to present this and other fines works of art of this great artist in the rich Cuban-surrealist tradition.  “The fundamental characteristic of my work is the conflict between the protagonist and the context, the hypothetical space where something is always being build”,----- Carlos Rene Aguilera Tamayo.  

Key Awards:

1996- Gold Medal, Central American and Caribbean Third Bienal, Dominican Republic
1993 -Grand Prize Regino Botti, Cuba
1992- Inducted in the Salon Nacional de Premiados, Cuba
1990-Grand Prize Regino Botti, Guantanamo, Cuba

Selected Solo Expositions:

1997- "Obra Reciente", Mary Anthony Galleries, Soho, New York
1997- "Paradojas Tropicales", Biblioteca Universitaria de Bordeaux, France
1996- "Exodos y Estaciones", Galeria Nouveau, Santo Domingo, D.R.
1994- "Obra Reciente", Universidad de Tolima, Ibaque, Colombia
1993-"Contextos Encontrados", Galeria Oriente, Santiago de Cuba
1993-"Paradojillas Tropicales" Festival AFrocaribeno, Bordeaux, Francia

Main Group Expositions:

"Kuba Kunst Heute", Elekluft, Bonn, Germany
"Kuba Kujst Heute", Kaiser-Karl-Klinik, Bonn, Germany
1996- "Social Unrest", Carib Art Gallery, New York, USA
1995-"Hecho en Cuba", Galeria de Miraflores, Lima, Peru
1994-Salon UNEAC, Santiago de Cuba, Cuba
1994-Dibujos y Pinturas de Cuba, Uruguay and Argentina
1989-Bienal Internacional Interressgrafik, Berlin, Germany.
1998-Colectiva del Instituto Superior de Arte, Universidad de Boston, USA
1987-Colectiva del Instituto Superior de Arte, Helsinky, Finlandia
1986-Colective del Instituto Superior de Arte en Sofia, Bulgaria
1983-Grafica Cuban, Scezin, Polonia.

Selected Private Collections:

Museo Emilio Bacardi, Santiago de Cuba, Cuba
Centro wilfredo Lam, La Habana, Cuba
The National ARts Club, New York,  USA
Centro de Estudios Cubanos, New York, USA

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