CARLOS JAVIER GARCÍA HUERGOS

La Habana, 1969

Since Carlos was a boy, he has been attracted to the world of numbers and mathematics. He had a special relationship with his grandfather—together they deconstructed fractions and solved differential equations as part of their daily routine. He enrolled in a Cuban senior high school institutions for advantaged students and continued his studies in the former Czechoslovakia, where he lived in 1988–1989, thanks to an exchange scholarship. Toward the end of that year, he presented the first signs of paranoid schizophrenia, which he was promptly diagnosed with. He had to go back to Cuba with hallucinations and violent behavior and was admitted to a psychiatric hospital several times. Nonetheless, was able to finish his Mathematics degree at the University of Havana, graduating with honors in 1995. Although his illness prevented him from practicing his profession, through art he found a new expression for his fascination with numbers. 

 

However, mathematics became part of his life from another perspective. They took shape as algorithms and ciphers that he invented through the creative process. These motifs became constant, sharing their existence with words and characters of diverse nature.

 

His work is full of hidden motives, many of which are dictated by "his voices,” Carlitos confesses. They reflect his complex personality, bringing to light elements of his life as well as more ordinary obsessions, or traces of daily encounters, which suggest funny ideas, fanciful appearances. Often, he replaces the mouths or noses of his characters with small ingenious figures (boats, snakes, ice cream cones, David’s cross...) and fills the buildings he draws with tiny illegible print. His human figures are wrapped in a potpourri of numbers and texts. His compositions are convoluted and confusing, and fragmented stories often drown out the protagonists, as if they don’t deserve to stand out—like himself, like his personality—preserving multilayered presences that are simultaneously distinguishable and indifferent, struggling against the possibility of being absorbed or swallowed up by powerful surroundings.

 

Carlos’ creations are both transcendent and casual. He may not attach a particular importance to, for example, adorning his characters’ noses or mouths, beyond believing that the world is too boring and that he needs to add his share of fun to it. In general, his works are an uncontainable torrent of ideas, many of which are unconnected, but others may reveal the weight of history and his lucidity, even possible memories, some painful and which must be expelled. Traumas and tormenting names such as “Paul,” for example, his academic and personal adversary from his days in Czechoslovakia, of whom he refuses to speak or give any concrete image, other than the enigmatic and barely nominative presence in his drawings.

 

He spends entire days at his room calmly immersed in his creations, and when his intensity wanes, he goes out of his apartment and takes walks – sometimes he goes very far from his neighborhood –  and returns with renewed energy and emotions to pick up where he left off. Since he began drawing more systematically around 2000, he has added one piece after another to his unbridled production, offering an account of his life through fascinating and always diverse images and symbols.

 

MAIN EXHIBITIONS

- Dans l’intimité d’une collection. Art Brut. La donation Decharme au Centre Pompidou. Grand Palais (Paris, France). 2025.

- Art Brut CUBA. La Collection de L’Art Brut (Lausanne Switzerland). 2024 – 2025.

- The Cuban Connection. Galerie Atelier Herenplaats (Rotterdam, The Netherlands). 2023.

- 5th Art Brut Biënnale (Hengelo, The Netherlands). 2023.

- Documenta 15. Documenta Halle (Kassel, Germany). 2022.

- Pocorart World exhibition. Chance and nacessity and ... 3331 Arts Chiyoda (Chiyoda, Japan). 2021.

- Visions et Créations Dissidentes. Musée de la Création Franche (Bègles, France). 2019.

- Here and Now – Art Brut. Atelierhaus Aachen. (Aachen, Germany). 2019.

- Five Cuban Outsiders. Indigo Arts Gallery. (Philadelphia, USA). 2018.

- Connecting Spontaneous Expressions. RIERA STUDIO. (Havana, Cuba). 2018.

- Drawings from Cuba. Kunsthaus Kannen. Museum for Art Brut and Outsider Art. (Münster, Germany). 2018.

- 2nd National Exhibition of Art Brut Project Cuba. (Havana, Cuba). 2018.

- Effect – Correction. La Fábrica de Arte Cubano. (Havana, Cuba). 2017.

- First Exhibition of the Art Brut Project Cuba’s Collection. Riera Studio. (Havana, Cuba). 2016.

- New Outsider Art from Cuba. Gallery C. (Dubuque, USA). 2016

- Parallel Expressions. 12th Havana Biennial. RIERA STUDIO. (Havana, Cuba). 2015.

- New Outsider Art from Cuba. Lehigh University Museum. (Pennsylvania, USA). 2015.

- Riera Studio: Art Brut Project Cuba. Christian Berst Art Brut (Klein and Berst). (New York, USA). 2015.

- Echoes from unconsciousness. Spanish Embassy at Cuba. (Havana, Cuba). 2014.

- New Outsider Art from Cuba. Spanish Cultural Center of Miami. (Miami, USA). 2013.

- Simple Art. RIERA STUDIO. (Havana, Cuba). 2013.

 

COLLECTIONS

- Musée National d’Art Moderne. Centre Pompidou (Paris, France).

- Musée de la Création Franche (Bègles, France).

- Collection Bruno Decharme (France).

- Collection Jean-Paul Longchamps (Switzerland).

- Collection Carmen and Daniel Klein (Switzerland).

- Collection Florence and Daniel Guerlain (France).

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