“Once Removed”, the current exhibition at Postmasters Gallery, features the latest mixed media work by the artist Anthony Goicolea. Visiting his family’s native land of Cuba (first time) and searching for family remnants, Goicolea generates paintings, photographs, sculpture, and video installation in an attempt to reconcile with his lost sense of family tradition. The exhibition succeeds on displaying his nostalgia because Goicolea ties all these mediums together with multiple visual metaphors.
When you first arrive you immediately notice the tropical flora filling the middle of the gallery floor. The paintings in the main gallery depict two events, one being a large family photo session with idealized characters and Hollywood props. The other paintings showing stacked Concrete Masonry Units (CMU) with a glass jar on top containing a family bust. Contrasting these works are multiple photographs of empty tropical landscapes and destroyed architecture. The rear gallery contains a model of a constructed home, which houses a projector. The film shows Goicolea sitting in a row boat and dropping CMU blocks into the water, which is a familiar image from one of the photographs in the main gallery.
The photographs are a great historical archive of reality, and the paintings display the idealization of family memories. By repeating the CMU blocks, row boats, and architectural remnants throughout the works Anthony Goicolea was able to illustrate the complex duality of family tradition. The burden of responsibility and the extravagant commemoration we feel for our family history is constantly at odds and will always be a part of the human experience.
Though commemoration is evident in Goicolea's idealization of the family members he never met, I do not feel this exhibition was in any way a memorial to the life he never knew. The family portraits become poignantly nostalgic when juxtaposed with the landscapes created for his photographs of modern day Cuba. The subjects of his photographs appear to be archeological excavations of abandoned places. In light of this, it should be noted that “Once Removed” makes, in some ways, a socio-political statement on pre- and post-revolution Cuba. Let us not forget that Goicolea never experienced his Cuban heritage first-hand because his family left this place. This is where the importance of the photograph “Jettisoned” and the video instillation aptly named “Displacement” come into play. The small row boat is a symbol of leaving (/escaping) Cuba, with the concrete blocks a symbol of the home being left behind. The most direct evidence of this theme is the press release's statement on “Transplant (Terrace Garden)”, the centerpiece of the main exhibition room. “Transplant” is described as a “large grouping of battered and bandaged tropical plants, some shipped from the garden terrace of Goicolea's father's home...The wear and tear of their long journey is made evident by the makeshift splints and crutches to which this uprooted garden is bound and supported by.” The family in “Night Sitting” and the Goicolea family of today are indeed connected by a shared history and tradition, but they are separated by a journey that took its toll on so many Cuban families.
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