Pan American Art Projects to Present Jose Toirac & Meira Marrero's VANITAS, 9/12-11/22

Pan American Art Projects is very pleased to announce the opening of our new exhibition , Vanitas by Cuban artistic team José Toirac & Meira Marrero. Vanitas is the first major solo exhibition for the artists in a gallery in the United States; and it includes paintings, sculptures, installations and videos.

Sept 12 - Nov 22, 2013
Opening Reception Thursday September 12th, 6-8 pm Artists will be present at the opening reception. Artists will be in Miami from September 7 through September 15 and will be available for interviews during that time.

The exhibition focuses on the concept of vanity as an ephemeral element in the trajectory of one's life. Through the integration of several works from different stages in their artistic production the artists make the point that everything is temporary: fame, beauty, power, political alliances, wealth.

The centerpiece to the exhibition, from which we get the title of our show, is Vanitas, an assemblage of 23 portraits of the first ladies of Cuba, accompanied by the artists' representation of the cover of the magazine Vanidades from 1952 which contained an article about Cuban first ladies that inspired the "Vanitas" work and project.

Cara y Cruz is a work from 1996 composed of 16 paintings: 8 of them are of young revolutionaries who were executed for opposition to Batista, president of Cuba 1954- 1958. The other eight are of people executed immediately after the Cuban revolution for their involvement in the assassination of people who fought against Batista.

The show brings together a group of pieces that deal with the notion of mortalitymostly from a philosophical point of view.Theworksare from different periods, provingthattransience has been a continual theme in these artists' oeuvre. The concept is treated from different angles, of human decay and even death like in the sculpture Vanitas: here the beautiful young face of the woman from the 1952 magazine cover is transformed into a striking, beautifully executed white marble sculpture of a skull. Then we have the more abstractinstanceslikefrom the world of politics, asin Cara y Cruz.It is, throughout,the artists' way ofreflecting about the temporality of life, beauty, political or financial success. Memento Mori, one of the audio/video installations, summarizes this idea with the echo of its imponderable Latin message: remember that you will die,pronounced in tens of different living languages.

Artists will also be exhibiting concurrently in a collective exhibition at the USF Contemporary Art Museum entitled Sub-Rosa with several works. Please visit www.ira.ufs.edu for more information.

Image: Solve et Coagula, 2012 (Detail) Installation, mixed media, dimensions variable