Alexi Torres
Cuban artist Alexi Torres redefines contemporary art by weaving spirituality, politics, and collective memory into his intricate, multi-layered paintings and sculptures. Inspired by his Cuban heritage and agrarian traditions, his work challenges conventional narratives, reconstructing cultural and political icons with a unique visual language that invites deep reflection.
Who is Alexi Torres?
Alexi Torres discusses the relationship between nature and man in a contemporary context emphasizing the interconnectedness of all living things. He seeks to initiate a dialogue on the effects and power of human thought and behavior on our everyday reality, The mind and ideas as a creative force rules his creative process. He goes into scenarios of how to use our thinking and focus to be authentic and to block outsider manipulations. Following universal laws he finds the connection between spirituality and politics, richness and acceptance.
Torres taps into collective memory with playful themes and ironic juxtapositions relevant to the contemporary experience. His series range from portraits of ordinary people, cultural, military to a diverse sampling of symbols from popular culture. These images are then reimagined and reconstructed employing a complex unique multi-layer painting technique, bronze sculptures and objects. Inspired by the agrarian lifestyle of his friends and family, Torres plants an idea for each new work and harvests it at completion according to the lunar patterns followed by his ancestors in his native Cuba. To record this ritual, each painting is begun and finished on a waning moon and recorded with his signature on the canvas.
Alexi Torres was born in 1976 in Bermeja, a small village about 70 miles southeast of Havana, Cuba. From 1989-1991 he studied at Escuela Provicial de Artes in Mantanzas and 1991-1995 at Escuela Nacional de Artes in Havana. Torres has had numerous solo and group exhibitions in the United States and abroad and hist work can be found in major private and public collections, including the private collections of Will Smith, Los Angeles, CA; Delta Airlines, Atlanta GA; Marietta Cobb Museum of Art, Marietta, GA; Hoover Public Library, Hoover, AL; Museum of Art Matanzas, Cuba; David Mills, San Francisco, CA; Lewis Brisbois Bisgaard & Smith, Atlanta, GA; Ruth Beardsley, Australia; Laura Rathe, Houston, TX; Bernie Marcus, Boca Raton , FL; Trijicon Inc, VA; Law & Moran, Atlanta GA. He is the recipient of the following awards: 2017 Top prize at Art Fields, SC. 2014 People’s Choice Award; Red Clay Survey; Huntsville Museum of Art. 2002 Grand Prize "Mapa Conceptual”, Matanzas, Cuba. 2000 Second Place Roberto Diego, Provincial Salon of Visual Arts, Matanzas, Cuba.
