Every visitor to Cuba returns to remark on what seems fact: Cuba is a hot country in more ways than one. The politics is hot, the temperature is hot, the people are hot (everything, it seems, but the food). Some say Cuba is sexy, but the truth is more refined. Yes, it’s sexy, but what it really is, is sensual. Cuba seduces your senses in refined and not so refined ways, whether it’s the easy intimate touching, the gorgeous music, the sight for sore eyes bodies and smiles, or the aroma of roast pork and moros y cristianos before they touch your tongue and slide down to your belly.

In Cuba, your body feels born again, the people and the place awakening your body to new and old pleasures in ways you may not have experienced for weeks or months or even years. Some of this sense and sensuality finds its way into the art that comes from Cuba.

If you’re too careful, of course, you’ll miss it. If you’re an upscale art dealer looking for what’s “in,” you will definitely miss it, because there are a lot of intellectual artists in Cuba, well-trained and with fine minds, doing what’s “in,” and doing it very well, thank you. But around the edges of that world, and sometimes around the edges of those same artists with the well-trained art minds, you will find the sensual work. They may be works the artists are doing for fun or something they did years ago and put away as unimportant for today; they may be works that the artists figure would be a little too hot for today’s Cuba. But if you really look, you’ll find the work.

This is a show that’s just a beginning, something we decided to start looking for because seductivenss and sensuality are so much a part of Cuban life. Most of the artists in this show have been shown at the Cuban Art Space before, in other wraps – Alicia Leal, William Pérez, Adrián Rumbaut, Montebravo, Jairo Alfonso, Sandra Dooley, Zaida del Rio, Jacqueline Brito, Guillermo Estrada-Viera, Yamilys Brito, Luis E. Camejo, Wayacón, Rocío García. Others have not: the sensational artist, Dania Fleites, who does openly sexual work, e.g., and Mabel Poblet, who does delicate autobiographical pieces. There’s a mix of trained artists and self-taught artists, though few of the latter: we haven’t come across much sensuality in the work of Cuban self-taught artists.

The show runs from April 5 to April 29. Gallery hours are Monday - Friday, 11 to 7, and on Saturdays, 12 to 5. Check it out!

For further information: 212.242.0559 or slevinson@cubanartspace.net