Reynier Leyva Novo: Former Present Today
January 12—March 10, 2024
The Blaffer Art Museum at the University of Houston is proud to present the first solo museum exhibition in the United States of Cuban conceptual artist Reynier Leyva Novo. Former Present Today presents a newly realized installation and painting series to simultaneously reveal and conceal monuments, structures, and figureheads which manifest revolution and tyranny. The works are created through research on icons and memorialization and how the prestige of nation established through revolution utilizes both facts and myths as a means of propaganda.
The exhibition reflects upon monuments and public sculpture in nationalist ideology and the failed journey to social utopia. The first iteration of this project was realized at the 2019 Aichi Triennale in Japan where Novo created two sculptures of 1:1 replicas of monuments in Russia and presented them with paintings of slogans and images cut out from propaganda posters made by avant-garde artists in Soviet-era Russia.
Novo’s work challenges ideology and symbols of power, questioning notions of an individual’s ability to affect change. His works form an interventionist response to the seemingly recognizable in the spaces of public memory, known histories, and axis’ of power around us. The artist is renowned for political responses to the politics of Cuba through creating a new space among Cuban artists who, over the past several decades, have worked across media to address issues of censorship, freedom, and utopia. Novo takes on the same challenges with a heightened sense of formal accomplishment through conceptual works. Novo’s commitment to deconstructing myths while highlighting the fragments of reality and lived experiences that generate them has led him to political activism through art.
Reynier Leyva Novo: Former Present Today is co-organized by Steven Matijcio, Jane Dale Owen Director & Chief Curator, and Erika Mei Chua Holum, Cynthia Woods Mitchell Assistant Curator at the Blaffer Art Museum.
Exhibition Brochure
Reynier Leyva Novo: Former Present Today | Exhibition Brochure
published by Blaffer Art Museum
Remnants of ideology, markers of absence, and the ephemerality of revolution are embedded in recognizable sites of memory, power, and public space around us. Locating these layered and often obscured traces of political presence, multidisciplinary artist Reynier Leyva Novo excavates – and elevates – historical archives and imagery into today. In so doing, he deepens conversations surrounding the space, memory, and narratives of the past made manifest in the present and future. Former Present Today is the first solo museum exhibition in Texas for the Cuban conceptual artist and reflects upon re-imagined space, public monuments, and collective memory in nationalist ideology and the failed journey to social utopia.
Relocating from Havana to Houston in 2021, Novo combines research and observation into the icons of memorialization to present perspectives across a multitude of global political contexts. This process underscores power within artistic practice to challenge prevailing narratives, confront historical truths, and deconstruct myths. The artist simultaneously reveals and conceals structures, emblems, and figureheads entrenched in the public imaginary to propose alternative forms of memory-keeping in whispers, traces, and fleeting remains of life. Across large-scale sculptural installation to the subtle delicacy of a flower, Novo creates powerful interventionist responses to spaces of monumentality to consider the complexity of political landscapes and unseen dimensions that shape our collective memory and present reality.
