PISTOLETTO HAS A CASTLE IN HAVANA
Michelangelo Pistoletto has got us used to these things. In December 2014 -coinciding, unintentionally, with the restoration of diplomatic relations between Cuba and the United States– he presented at the mouth of the Almendares River his performance «Third paradise... Continuous». On April 30, 2015, he inaugurated in Havana the headquarters of the Embassy in Cuba of the Rebirth/third Paradise/continuous Art project. On May 12, 2016, his book Omnitheism and Democracy was presented. So, year after year, project after project...
Now he showed up with another one of his: to take by storm an old castle of Havana city, currently forgotten, an incredible construction in the middle of the dense vegetation of Havana´s Metropolitan Park, to present the exhibition Third paradise, a laboratory of responsible art, along with Juan Sandoval and Alejandro Vásquez (from Elpuente_lab), Mariangela Aponte, Savina Tarsitano (from the Kid's Guernica Project), Juan Carlos Rodríguez, Byrom Coto and Rayner Pantoja.
The exhibition is the continuation of the Third Paradise project and was inserted in the wide program of the Italian Culture Day in Cuba. Loyal to his aesthetic postulates, the Italian artist presented at the Gran Teatro de La Habana Alicia Alonso the Rebirth Forum «Geography of transformation», participated in the exhibition The invisible cities in the headquarters of the Unión de Arquitectos e Ingenieros de la Construcción de Cuba (Union of Architects and Construction Engineers of Cuba,) and demonstrated once again his immense passion for the Island when he donated his work Thirteen less One to the National Museum of Fine Arts.
Those of us who attended his anthological personal exhibition at the headquarters of the Universal Art Building of the National Museum of Fine Arts in Havana, remember the intense emotion of being partakers of a singular event: hundreds of people present, with a sui generis complicity, as was shown when all, in one way or another, wanted to roll their huge ball of paper down the pavement of Parque Central. Now he has cast his eye on an abandoned castle in some no less abandoned Jardines de La Tropical in the Cuban capital... he must be up to something!