Dialogo Figurativo “Figurative Dialogue” – A Solo Exhibition by Abel Massot

Gallery Bogart is pleased to present Dialogo Figurativo “Figurative Dialogue” an Abel Massot Solo Exhibition, as the Gallery’s inaugural show. Massot’s exhibit highlights the commitment of the gallery to promote outstanding Latin American Art and reflects our new approach to interpretation, demonstarting that Latin American Art is not niche or homogenous interest. Abel Massot lives and works in Havana, Cuba and is an award-winning contemporary artist who mainly explores the emotional bonds and existentialist questions of the modern human being.  Massot utilizes large scale, gestural motions, color, and form to develop the expressive capacity of the individuals in his works, leaving the viewer in awe of the emotional capacity and vastness of his paintings. 

Artist’s Statement 

In all my work, solitary and introspective images coincide with collective figures that reflect a certain degree of connection. It is my interest to discourse about human beings and their affective bond: their coexistence, their different choices, their harmony, or their loneliness. Hence, faces and torsos manifest an intimate and emotional character.  Each composition allows us to imagine the difficult framework of our social relationships and is a testimony of different solicitudes or of the need to establish a dialogue. 

I choose to recreate the faces in large formats as a specific resource to achieve an expressive immediacy that has as background different artists ranging from the tearing of Egon Schiele and the Cuban Antonia Eiriz to the disfigurement of Willem de Kooning, Francis Bacon, and Karel Appel.

I remain faithful to a palette varied in nuances. I use acrylic paint, a material that allows me to accelerate the creative process and channel all my energy, enthusiasm, and interest. I use the fragmentation or duplication of the figures as an expressive tool to place the characters in a conflict in which somehow the reflection: “adapt or separate” is reached. And as a consequence, a space for personal reflection is found. I insist on placing the figures prominently above the backgrounds, seeking to make the viewer aware that the center of interest is the human and the complexities of his/her feelings and actions.

Opening Reception 

Saturday, November 5th 

4:00pm to 7:00pm

1400 Union Avenue
Kansas City, MO 64101