Mario Bencomo: Elegy to Poetry/Le Cabinet de Poésie, which features a series of drawings and handmade books inspired by the work of poets from diverse cultures and languages, is now on display at Miami International Airport. The inaugural exhibition in MIA’s newest gallery, The Eye Has to Travel, near Gate D-30, pays homage to the centuries-old dialogue between painting and poetry.
“The works have a richly layered, dense graphic quality in which the words and the natural forms synthesize as a unified whole,” said Yolanda Sánchez, Ph.D., Fine Arts and Cultural Affairs Director at MIA. “This is a very personal exhibition consisting of a collection of works that he has been accumulating over the last few years.”
Each drawing’s title is an ode to a specific poem. Bencomo’s purpose is not for the poems to be fully legible nor to diminish their importance by painting over them, but to pay tribute to the poetry by integrating the handwritten poems into the overall composition. The superimposed drawings, which almost look like symbols, are inspired by botanical prints – an interest for Bencomo that originated in childhood.
Mario Bencomo was born in Pinar del Río, Cuba, in 1953. His style is noted for the strong imagery, color and ambiguity in his paintings, drawings and artist’s books. He has participated in exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, Minnesota Museum of Art, Contemporary Art Center in New Orleans, Centre d’Art Santa Monica in Barcelona and the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City. His work was included in the Outside Cuba/Fuera de Cuba exhibition, the Miami Generation traveling exhibition and the Cuba-USA: The First Generation traveling exhibition. His work is in the permanent collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, Detroit Institute of Art, Denver Art Museum, Havana’s Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Norton Museum of Art in West Palm Beach, Miami-Dade Public Library and the Art Museum of the Americas in Washington, D.C., among others.
The Mario Bencomo: Elegy to Poetry/Le Cabinet de Poésie exhibition continues the primary mission of the Aviation Department’s Fine Arts and Cultural Affairs Division to humanize and enrich the airport environment through the commission of contemporary artwork and the presentation of exhibitions in various media that communicate culture, environment and art resources of an international scope.
