In his first solo exhibition in the US, Cuban artist Angel Delgado explores the themes of confinement, regimentation, and oppression that have preoccupied him with even more intensity since his imprisonment in 1990 for a performance in which he defecated on a Communist newspaper. Titled “Límite Continuo/Continuous Limit,” the show suggests that the restrictions and limitations of prison are coextensive with life outside its walls. It’s a bleak, rather hopeless outlook—life as a penitentiary—but Delgado’s elegant draftsmanship and restrained sense of color and materials give the works a quiet power that evokes more nuanced concerns. In a series of images on handkerchiefs, hand-drawn figures are superimposed on digital prints of locks and bars. In one, a man lies facedown on the ground with his hands tied behind his back, his torso at the same angle as a padlock on an industrial metal door. By juxtaposing an image from everyday life—perhaps a bolted storefront—with one of enforced bondage and submission, Delgado creates a parallel between the two, gesturing toward the larger issues of security, fear, ownership, and control that unite commercial and penal systems.
Other works are more psychological. A series of drawings executed in colored pencil and cold cream on soiled bedsheets depicts a number of surreal, highly symbolic scenes. In one, a dark substance drips from an overhead grate, coalescing into a gruesome mass of heads and limbs below. Another is a scene from a carceral version of “The Princess and the Pea,” depicting a reclining, faceless figure atop a stack of oversize cinder blocks. Combining the stark deprivations of prison life with a dreamlike existentialism, the drawings present a grim vision of the general human condition. But their crisp lines and spare, black-and-white palette imbue this depressing state with a muted beauty and clarity that is almost otherworldly, providing a tiny glimpse of transcendence.
