Carlos Nicanor “The skein of the soul”
Carlos Nicanor- Press Release.docx
September 7 – October 5, 2024
Design District
21 NE 39th Street, Miami, FL 33137
Opening Reception
Saturday, September 7, 2024 6 – 9 p.m.
Pan American Art Projects is pleased to announce the upcoming exhibition of renowned Canarian artist Carlos Nicanor, titled The skein of the soul, curated by Claudia Taboada. This exhibition offers a profound exploration of the human essence through Nicanor’s interactive installation, sculptures and drawings, and marks a significant milestone in his career. It is a self-referential exhibition. This exhibition is a heartfelt testimony of the artist’s journey, showcasing his vibrant works from Tenerife to the US for the very first time.
Carlos Nicanor, a sculptor from the Canary Islands, seamlessly blends the surrealist legacy of André Breton, the dadaist movement, and the word-object concept of Joseph Kosuth with the rich heritage of Canarian artisans. His work defies the physical limitations of materials, transforming wood, metal, threads, and paper into almost impossibly smooth, Carlos Nicanor- Press Release.docx
organic, and autonomous forms. Nicanor’s sculptures challenge both the physics of the materials and human sensitivity, reminding us that art is born from the handmade, evolving at a pace distinct from contemporary life.
The artist’s work is a testament to the duality of form and word, using irony and sarcasm as playful yet profound tools. His installations, like Icor (2020), transform spaces into mythological realms, engaging viewers both physically and intellectually. They invite (or not) the public to penetrate that swarm of threads turned into arteries. They are the metaphor of penetrating the human body viscerally, reading it from the inside, rediscovering it from its bone, soul, and poetry. Nicanor’s ability to expand traditional materials into contemporary gestures places him alongside notable artists like the Cuban collective Los Carpinteros and American sculptor Martin Puryear.
About the artist
He graduated in Fine Arts at the University of La Laguna and began exhibiting his work in 2002. In 2006 he made his first solo exhibition, entitled Buscador de nortes, in which under the slogan “where everything is done and everything to do” he would present a collection of veiled tributes to some of the sculptors he admires, Brancusi and Giacometti among others.
His exhibitions include Antinatura/Sinbiología (Galería Artizar 2010-2012), and Osmosis. Blancas + Nicanor (TEA Tenerife Espacio de las Artes, 2015), as well as their participation in the XII Havana Biennial within the Detrás del Muro project, with the installation Lemon Way, in which he built a path of yellow wooden tiles that crossed the Malecón to die in the Caribbean, heading to Florida.
During 2016 and 2017 he developed the Neomismos project, which is made up of two individual exhibitions at the Twin Gallery (Madrid) and the Artizar Gallery, which concludes with an installation presented by Carlos Delgado Mayordomo titled The Truth of Madame Sifira. In 2020, just after the confinements, he carried out his most ambitious project to date at the Cajacanarias Foundation. Curated by Omar-Pascual Castillo and titled Tell Charon that I bring him flowers, the exhibition was a poetic and sincere reflection on the journey of life and the omnipresence of death.
His works have been selected in biennial exhibitions both in Las Palmas and Tenerife, deserving first prizes such as the Excellence of sculpture of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Miguel Arcángel (2011) or the First Prize Manolo Millares CajaCanarias (2009).
In 2023, he carried out the project From the flesh to the bone, from the bone to the soul, curated by Dennys Matos, at the Centro Atlántico de Arte Moderno (CAAM), in which Nicanor presented us with a kind of fictitious autopsy of the artist himself in an exercise of deconstruction of the self.
For media inquiries, please contact: miami@panamericanart.com
