(…)Adonis Flores must be approached from several directions, and he—as well as his works—should be studied from all possible angles. The biographic angle portrays him as a boy who, when he was 18 years old, was chewed, devoured and spit by the Angola war.
(From this terrible Big Bang comes his entire work: a sort of new post-traumatic art.)
The fashion angle presents him as the only Cuban artist who has visually prologed a book by Tom Wolfe. (…) Two things call my attention in his work. One: the powerful magnetism exerted by the military1 when bursting into contemporary Cuban art, where military things are almost taboo. Two: his vindication of the soldier as the center of Cuban pop culture. And he makes those uniformed men do many strange things. To begin with: dancing hula-hula with funereal crowns (Honras fúnebres – Funeral Rites, 2007, 3 min); to watch with toilet paper field-glasses all eccentric and different persons (Visionario – Visionary, 2006); to be on military patrol with loudspeakers on the ears to hear the popular psychophonia (Oidor – Hearer, 2006); to plant oneself in a flowerpot for an entire day as a houseplant (Ornamental, 2004), and so on. An entire performance potential— almost criminal—which may well be understood as an audiovisual guide for absurd persons. I summarize it to fit it in Twitter: Adonis Flores disrupts the military. (…)
