Press Release - Galleria Continua

Águila de Oro. Rayo 108 entre Zanja y Dragones. Barrio Chino de La Habana
habana@galleriacontinua.com
‘Cuarteto’
Ai Weiwei, CHEN ZHEN, Gu Dexin, Kan Xuan, QIU ZHIJIE, Sun Yuan & Peng Yu
OPENING: SATURDAY, JULY 2, 2016
Starting from 6 pm: Cocktail and LIVE QUARTET music
Kan Xuan ‘Looking looking looking for…’ 2001 (video still)
A quartet is a musical composition written for an ensemble of four musicians or singers. If it were
composed of at least one breath, a bow and a percussion instrument, it would resemble a small
orchestra.
Four are the languages spoken in ARTE CONTINUA, the space that the Gallery opened on November
27, 2015, in Havana’s Chinatown. In a series of four complementary exhibitions, ARTE CONTINUA
invited about twenty artists to work within its space. In fact, inspired by a sort of typically
Cuban expertise, ARTE CONTINUA has gradually occupied, and ultimately filled, each one of its
corners.
The first artists invited to show their works here were the Cubans Alejandro Campins, Elizabet
Cerviño, Carlos Garaicoa, Susana Pilar Delahante Matienzo, Reynier Leyva Novo and José Yaque.
Within ARTE CONTINUA, the group found the story of Aguila de Oro, an Art Deco cinema theater,
built in the ‘50s and recently abandoned. In this sense, their show, Anclados en el territorio,
stood for both the first exploration of the possibilities of the former cinema theater and its
revitalization.
At the beginning of the year, the Italian artists Loris Cecchini, Ornaghi & Prestinari and Giovanni
Ozzola inserted new artworks within the frame of Anclados en el territorio. Their work not only
transformed the space, but also put into contact ARTE CONTINUA and Galleria Continua’s first
space, San Gimignano (Italy). The new show, named YOU + ME = US, opened on January 9, 2016.
On April 28, with Ensemble, Galleria Continua’s Francophone artists, Etel Adnan, Kader Attia,
Daniel Buren and Pascale Marthine Tayou, joined the group. Therefore, their works have released
into ARTE CONTINUA not only the French branch of the gallery, Galleria Continua Les Moulins, but
also the identities of the countries of origins of Adnan, Attia and Tayou, which are Lebanon,
Algeria, and Camaroon respectively. Ensemble has also participated in the Month of French
culture in Cuba with a series of conferences and events.
On July 2, 2016 with the opening of Cuarteto ARTE CONTINUA is pleased to present in Cuba the
works of the Chinese artists Ai Weiwei, Chen Zhen, Gu Dexin, Kan Xuan, Qiu Zhijie, Sun Yuan & Peng
Yu and Chen Zhen’s interview with Hans Ulrich Obrist. In addition, a site-specific installation by
Gu Dexin will undergo, throughout the show, the processes of maturation and decomposition. In
this context, while Gu Dexin’s work creates a space-time bond in between two former cinema
theaters, Galleria Continua San Gimignano’s space and Águila de Oro, the exhibition stands as a
bridge in between Cuba and China, ARTE CONTINUA and Galleria Continua Beijing.
Cuarteto is thus the fourth part of ARTE CONTINUA’s first concert. Increasingly heterogeneous,
its orchestra has performed a symphony of four movements, the exhibitions, tuned to Galleria
Continua’s four headquarters: San Gimignano, Beijing, Les Moulins and Habana. Moreover, Cuarteto
and ARTE CONTINUA, in harmony and collaboration with the environment surrounding them, enhance
its artistic potential. In such fashion, they promote a universal invite to “love differences”.
During its four exhibitions, ARTE CONTINUA organized conferences, workshops, performances and
presentations by artists, critics and curators from Cuba and abroad. In addition, with Promenade
á La Havane (2015) by Daniel Buren and Kamouflage (2016) by Pascale Marthine Tayou the Gallery has
presented the city with numerous public art interventions.
Daniel Buren ‘Promenade à La Havane’ 2015
Pascale Marthine Tayou ‘Kamouflage’ 2016
Exhibitions and artists:
1. Anclados en el Territorio
Alejandro Campins, Elizabet Cerviño, Susana Pilar Delahante Matienzo, Carlos Garaicoa,
Reynier Leyva Novo, José Yaque
2. TÚ + YO = NOSOTROS
Loris Cecchini, Ornaghi & Prestinari, Giovanni Ozzola
3. Ensemble
Etel Adnan, Kader Attia, Daniel Buren, Pascale Marthine Tayou
4. Cuarteto
Ai Weiwei, Chen Zhen, Gu Dexin, Kan Xuan, Qiu Zhijie, Sun Yuan & Peng Yu
Águila de Oro. Rayo 108 entre Zanja y Dragones. Barrio Chino de La Habana
habana@galleriacontinua.com
in collaboration with: