WINDHOEK-The second exhibition of the Cuban artist, Yasiel Palomino Pérez, titled Riding Souls is currently exhibiting at the Omba Gallery until May 15.
The critically acclaimed Riding Souls exhibition, known in Spanish as Cabalgando Almas, was first exhibited in Havana in Cuba. After Pérez moved to Namibia earlier this year, he decided to host his exhibition at the Omba Gallery to showcase his talents to Namibian art lovers. In this artworks Yasiel has used oil and acrylic paints in combination with fine and large emotional brushstrokes. He depicts various breeds of horses moving restlessly across large canvases. Looking at the paintings, one can almost imagine the horses snorting impatiently through flared nostrils and pounding their hooves on the earth.
In this exhibition Yasiel is seeking perfection and he found it entirely in the temperament and physical nature of the horse. The Spanish word for ‘soul’ is ‘alma’ and there on his canvases spirited equestrian phantoms gallop and storm seemingly from nowhere, but actually from the very bowels of Latin American spirituality and nostalgia – sweet and warm, but with a bitter aftertaste towards the observer.
True to his anti-materialistic Cuban roots, Yasiel says that once upon a time, before the advent and interference of technology, man and horse were one. In this relationship, the horse, a beautiful majestic creature on its own, became the perfect metaphor for the yearnings of the human heart and has come to symbolise for him the essence of the soul (both man and beast). The unselfconscious beauty as manifested by horses and the awe they inspire with their graceful movements. In the world of Yasiel, a wild horse running without restraint is akin to the attainment of the highest form of freedom and freedom. He says with some intensity, is the core yearning of every human heart.
Yasiel hails from the town and province of Las Tunas, in the Colonia Blanca area of Cuba. He was born into a family of musicians, artists and poets. His father is a self-taught music teacher. A great influence on his life and art, this exhibition in particular, was the friendship he had shared with his horse known as Fury as a young child on the family farm in Colonia Blanca, watching and drawing horses for hours.
In 2006 Yasiel spent the next three years lecturing at his alma mater and dedicated his leisure time to producing his own artworks. It takes him on average between two days to a week to complete a painting and he doesn’t use any visual aids to draw his horses, preferring instead to draw on his immense vault of memories. He first went solo with Riding Souls in 2014, followed by group exhibitions thereafter in Russia and Germany.