Opening Reception and meeting with the artist: May 15th, 7:30 p.m. Wine will be served.

“I have been in Cuba, I have been in Havana, I have been there, I’ve seen that, I’ve breathed that air, I talk to people, I drink espresso at the open window of a small coffee shop across from El Capitolio, I even imagine Hemingway drinking espresso at the same place. The shop was very old, I mean, really old: paint of different colors was hanging from the seiling as a tear down paper, thick layer of dust underlining relief and unfinished walls, electrical wires wore chaotically streaming in were different directions like veins on an old miner’s arm. All of that gave me an impression of something very old and alive. That’s it, the coffee shop was alive! And barista, dried, tall and bold mulatto with thick and short cigar butt in his mouth was same age as the shop and the espresso was extremely good. I love that shop and was there every day. But it wasn’t just espresso, it wasn’t barista. It wore layers of time, layers of culture, layers of street noise from loud arguments about baseball and crackling sounds of vintage American cars klaxons caught in a bizarre time warp, to kipping loud silence and importance of twenty years old guardians of the revolution, watching crowds from every other street corners. And suddenly: “There’s someone in my head but it’s not me” as Roger Waters singing. Suddenly I see historical layers of Havana 19 century, layers of a flourishing and fashionable city, a city of theaters featuring the most distinguished actors of the age, vitality and prosperity amongst the burgeoning middle-class led to expensive new classical mansions being erected, layers of a city known as the Paris of the Antilles, layers of 19 century night life with champagne, glamour, courtesans, ebony sky and fresh and thick air where I’m not just breathing it, but bite-out that air. And strangely enough, all these layers slowly sinking on the bottom of the image, became more transparent and faded away, and on a top of it another set of layers fade in, layers of today’s Havana, layers of extreme colors and textures, layers of the city falling into decay, layers of foreign visitors strolling through spectacularly dilapidated streets snapping photographs of the city’s rotting grandeur. It is like in “Photoshop”  working with a history brush in reverse order.

In my “Recollection of Havana” portfolio, I tried to reflect this vision, I tried to invoke that magnificent illusion, and wait, it is me in my head, time traveler and prospector contemplator.”
Vladimir Frumin

For questions, please call 713-395-3301 or email OurTexasInc@gmail.com

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