Carlos Rene Aguilera Tamayo at you me gallery in Hamilton

Thanks to a recent and vigorous history of exchange programs and related exhibitions, Hamilton's art scene has enjoyed exceptional exposure to Cuban artists. So much so that I greeted the polar bears of Carlos Rene Aguilera Tamayo's recent works as familiar friends rather than the oddities that they are in his frequently cryptic works. The paintings and prints in his current exhibition at you me gallery conduct an act of world-building that is both approachable in its themes and shot through with enigmas that keep the artist's perspective hauntingly suspended between the cosmos and the deeper dangers of the sea.



Carlos Rene Aguilera Tamayo

Large canvases hung as tapestries on the wall and smaller paintings folded loosely over their stretchers insist upon the transient objecthood of these works and add dimensional depth to images that are already heavily layered in both print and paint. This materiality is necessary in realms where figures are precariously balanced on shallow forms adrift in darkness enlivened by scatterings of waves and the swelling of stars.

In the largest of Aguilera's works, the cosmic spheres flatten into medallion-like shapes scrawled with images of animals and humans alike, iconic as the Barbie and Ken dolls who play out a Kama Sutra on their own nautical journey. These symbolic forms lends a whiff of something Greco-Roman to these odysseys, but those ever-present polar bears, Aguilera's own Ursa Major, disrupts any easy classicism – as with the disembodied triad of arms wielding fans like the branches of a tree, these tokens of familiarity provide uncertain shelter against this storm.


you me gallery: http://www.youmegallery.ca/
Carlos Rene Aguilera Tamayo: Paintings continues until December 8.


Stephanie Vegh is a Hamilton-based visual artist and writer whose criticism has appeared in Scotland's Map Magazine, Canadian Art, C Magazine, and Hamilton Arts & Letters, in addition to her own blog. Her drawings and installations have shown most recently at the upArt Contemporary Art Fair and Nathaniel Hughson Gallery in Hamilton. She is the Executive Director of the Hamilton Arts Council and a member of the Curatorial Committee for Hamilton's annual Supercrawl. She is also Akimblog's Hamilton correspondent and can be followed @Stephanie_Vegh on Twitter.