5th DIGITAL ART SALON
By: Israel Castellanos León

The 5th Digital Art Salon opened with an award ceremony celebrated on June 16. The event is held annually by the Pablo de la Torriente Brau Center under the slogan “Taking risks for imagination and beauty.” The jury, which was composed of the winning artists from the previous year - Eduardo Moltó, José Gómez Fresquet (Frémez), Orlando Galloso and Yoel Almaguer; plus Lesbia Vent Dumois (artist, curator and vice president of the Americas House) and Abel Casaus (Webmaster of the organizational institution)
Faced a difficult selection process. They first had to assemble a finalists show from the 130 Cuban submissions, and then grant the awards. In the category of Printed Work, Dennis García was awarded first prize for his series Freud’s Confessions; Orlando García received second prize for The Departure; Juan William Borrego got third prize for the pieces Second Arcane, Body’s Ingestion and The body’s Axis. Mentions were given to: Adrián Monzón, Fernando Pendás and Guillermo Bello. In the category of Audiovisual Work, Ángel Alonso Blanco was awarded for the piece Home and its Fantasies. Glenda León’s video art piece was granted a mention. All the participants exhibited at the Pablo de la Torriente Brau Center; their creations were generated with the computer, thanks to several computer programs and digital techniques.
But there were other parallel exhibitions: Eros and Thanatos, by Frémez, in the gallery 23 and 10, at Vedado; and Memory and caché, audiovisual piece exhibited at the National Museum of Fine Arts. Other international exhibitions were organized by country or geographical regions: America (at the Development Center for the Visual Arts); United States and Canada (at the Fototeca of Cuba); Europe, Asia and Oceania (at the Carmen Montilla Gallery); and spaces in Older Havana, next to the institution that organized the event, featured shows that stayed up for a month.
During the first week (June 17-20) there was an International Colloquy on Digital Art, at the office of the City’s Government. There were also works featured on the Internet on computers installed in several of the exhibition spaces. Following the theme of the symbiosis between architecture and the human body, Eduardo Moltó (from Havana), Alicia Candiani (from Buenos Aires), Guto Nobrega (from Rio de Janeiro) and Deena des Rioux (from New York), interacted in this type of creation that for the first time was coordinated by Cuba.

ArtNexus No. 50
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