PRESENTATION: Alejandro Piñeiro Bello-Entre El Día Y La Noche

Through a practice rooted in identity and memory, Alejandro Piñeiro Bello paints the enduring spirit of the Caribbean. Born in Havana and subsequently living and working between Los Angeles and Miami, the artist draws on the flora and fauna of his surrounding land and seascapes, implementing color, balance, and texture to portray social, cultural, and mythical histories.

By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Pace Galley Archive

Titled “Entre El Día Y La Noche”, Piñeiro Bello’s first exhibition in United  Kingdom exhibition features new paintings and works on paper that symbolically and formally explore cyclical journeys through time, and within the self. Alejandro Piñeiro Bello paints the sociocultural mystic splendor of Caribbean culture with a focus on Cuba and the surrounding island nations’ identities and histories. Using traditional materials, such as oil on raw linen or burlap, he creates striking dialogues between the deep beige of the canvas and an iridescent palette of jade greens, oranges, purples, and teals. Chromatic interplay in Piñeiro Bello’s work fortifies essential compositional structures, which often appear to revolve around an unseen center point. In these images, his fluidly handled paint forms endless landscapes that travel from dreamlike figuration to pure abstraction. Drawing inspiration from dreams and memories, Piñeiro Bello’s paintings describe fleeting, timeless feeling. Taking their inspiration from the atmospheric and emotional changes throughout a Cuban night and day, the scale of works in the exhibition represent some of the artist’s most ambitious to date. “El Misterio De La Noche” (2024), the largest painting featured in the exhibition, spans over six meters. Here, Piñeiro Bello employs the structural qualities of classical Western art history while upending expectations of the landscape through his alchemical use of color and non-linear storytelling. Spirals, shells, and whorls abound throughout the works in Entre El Día Y La Noche, reflecting Piñeiro Bello’s interest in Transcendentalist and Buddhist belief systems. The spiral that dominates three-quarters of the painting “La Espiral Luminosa” (2024) draws viewers into the artist’s unique painterly vision. Sweeping from deep aquatic shades at its outer edge into increasingly flame-like hues toward its center, it is unclear if this depicts the cross-section of a deep ocean or if Piñeiro Bello has lifted the surface of the water to reveal the reflection of a blazing midday sun. Like its dappled sea blues—created with an economical use of bright, light brushstrokes—the painting quivers between its marine depiction and a field of colorful abstraction. Nature is dominant in Piñeiro Bello’s worlds. Figures, when they appear, are small, loosely rendered, and nestled within the dynamic landscapes that surround them. Formally echoing the arcs of the waves, wind, and flora that shape the compositions, these bodies appear to emerge from—and of—the very brushstrokes that describe their setting. Citing Antonio Gaudi, Piñeiro Bello reminds us that “there are no straight lines or sharp corners in nature.” This impression of interconnectedness is present in “Nacimiento” (2023-24), whose central figure materializes from a rose-blushed, lotus-like bowl. Recalling Botticelli’s “The Birth of Venus”, Piñeiro Bello’s painting is similarly infused with an environmental vitality that raises the natural world to the status of personhood. Reflecting the island’s rich intercultural heritage, his practice is equally informed by the fiction, poetry, and music of his birthplace. Just as in the literary genre of lo real maravilloso (the marvelous real), these paintings depict the fantastic through an amplification of perceived reality. Inhered in the layers of Piñeiro Bello’s compositions lie the metamorphic, expressive juxtapositions of Latin America. In the lower ground floor gallery, Piñeiro Bello will display a selection of his works on paper and sketches alongside books and poems that have inspired his practice. Employing watercolor, gouache, and ink, the artist’s works on paper respond to their medium: the ivory paper background, which Piñeiro Bello keeps partially exposed, lends a backdrop of luminosity to the deliberate pen-marked crosshatching. At the core of Alejandro Piñeiro Bello’s artistic practice is a dedication to his homeland of Cuba, Caribbean diaspora, and surrounding island nations. Piñeiro Bello draws inspiration from the writings of Cuban poets and philosophers, such as José Lezama Lima, José Martí, Virgilio Piñera, and Julián del Casal. He shares a visual language with the artists Wifredo Lam, Manuel Mendive, and Víctor Manuel García Valdés while referencing painters such as Paul Gauguin, Hokusai, Vincent Van Gogh, Edvard Munch, and Wassily Kandinsky throughout his oeuvre. Using traditional materials, such as oil on raw linen, burlap, or hemp, he employs a saturated palette; characteristic vibrant accents of color oscillate between the layers in many of his paintings, highlighting areas of canvas against a deep backdrop. His visual language is defined by ethereal and endless landscapes, folkloric gestures, and the collective imagination of what a new magical Caribbean may reveal. Physical forms and ideals appear on a timeless plane drawn from his memories and dreams.

Photo: Alejandro Piñeiro Bello, El Misterio de La Noche, 2024, oil on hemp, 118-1/4″ × 247-1/2″ (300.4 cm × 628.7 cm), © Alejandro Piñeiro Bello, Courtesy the artist and Pace Gallery

Info: Pace Gallery, 5 Hanover Square, London, United Kingdom, Duration: 4-28/9/2024, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 11:00-18:00, www.pacegallery.com/