Miami, Sept. 19, 2016 – Miami Dade College’s (MDC) North Campus will present Cu4tro Caminos exhibition by three successful, nationally recognized MDC alumni, Miguel Saludes, Jefreid Lotti, and Alvaro Labadiño alongside the internationally recognized artist, Carlos Luna. The art exhibition depicts the unique style and artistry of each of the artists, and will take place Oct. 6, with an inaugural reception at 10 a.m., at North Campus’s Art Gallery, and a Gallery Night, Friday, Oct. 7, from 6 to 9 p.m. The exhibition will be open to the public Oct. 24.
Carlos Luna is regarded as one of the foremost contemporary Cuban painters and is part of a generation of international artists who have lived and worked in the USA for the last two decades and paved the way for new kinds of painting. Luna was born in Pinar Del Rio, Cuba in 1969. He studied painting in San Alejandro Fine Art Academy and later finished his studies at the National School or Art. His work evidences a long-standing interest in the vernacular culture and oral literature associated with proverbs, sayings, and riddles, incorporating dense pencil scribbles into the painting’s surface as an extension of the temporality of text into the imaginary. These graffiti-like scrawls subvert the calligraphic gestures of an artist like Jackson Pollock into more stable references, using the language of painting to create a form of visual literacy, while introducing elements of vernacular culture into mainstream artistic practices. Consistent with his spirit of supporting the career of young artists, Luna will be sharing the stage with three MDC alumni artists who will also be exhibiting their artwork.
Miguel A. Saludes was born in Havana, Cuba in 1989. He immigrated to the U.S. with his parents in 2005 and settled in Miami. Miguel became a proud alumnus of MDC in 2010, where he began pursuing his artistic path. Since then, he has earned his Master’s degree in painting at the University of Florida. He currently resides in Gainesville, FL.
Jefreid Lotti is a Cuban born artist based in Miami, FL. In the year 2000, he arrived in the U.S. where he studied painting at MDC, and in the private atelier Romero/Idalgo. During this time, he found the influential mentorships of major cultural figures of the Cuban diaspora. The most notable of which were painters Julio Larraz, Carlos Luna, poet and art critic Ricardo Pau-Llosa, all of whom influenced his craft, methodology, and nurtured his artistic evolution. Lotti works with traditional western media and the content of his work derives from formal, domestic, and identity concerns. He taught painting and drawing for two years at the University of Florida where he received a Master’s in Fine Arts in 2016.
Alvaro Labañino was born in 1989 in Miami, Florida. He is the son of a working-class family, of Cuban-Honduran heritage. Labañino attended MDC, and graduated cum laude in April 2012 from Florida International University (FIU) with a Bachelor of Fine Arts.
For more information, please contact Dr. Raimundo Socorro at 305-237-1328