Reynier Leyva Novo

Born in: 1983
From: Havana, Cuba
Lives and works: Havana, Cuba
Represented by: El Apartamento

UN goals

Biography

Reynier Leyva Novo works are formally minimal and conceptually charged. The Cuban artist proposes new ways to look at history and historiography, both at local and universal levels, through the premises of video, photography, installations and objects. His processes look back on forgotten events, data mining and recovery, in-depth field investigation and rearticulation of official narratives – an attempt to undo long rusted ideological constructions and bring humanism and subjectivity upfront.

Having graduated from the Cátedra Arte de Conducta, therefore a pupil of Tania Bruguera, Novo is considered a beacon for a new generation of Cuban artists with critical voices addressing the island's current position within the globalized world. His conceptualism and concern about social and political systems can be paralleled to the production of Hans Haacke, one of the precursors of modern activist art.

The aesthetics of Novo’s works manifest towards the reduction of the artwork to its essential structure as well as the use of industrial production techniques – elements that signal to the early Dada objects, such as Man Ray's 'The Gift' (1921).

Career highlights

Solo shows

2024, Blaffer Art Museum, Houston, USA: Reynier Leyva Novo: Former Present Today
2018, Fundación MARSO. Mexico City, Mexico: Castillo sin puertas: Apuntes legales para entender el tiempo,
2016, Galleria Continua, San Gimignano, Italy: El peso de la muerte
2013, Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Havana, Cuba: Para quebrar los muros
2013, Bildmuseet Museum of Contemporary Art and Visual Culture. Umeå, Sweden: El polvo, la sangre, el sueño común