Cuban painter Alejandro Piñeiro Bello’s dreamscapes light up Hong Kong’s Pace Gallery
The Miami-based Cuban artist on bringing his rich culture and vivid imagination to life on canvas for his latest show
Alejandro Piñeiro Bello has been dreaming – a lot. Not in the nap-all-day sense, but in the hermit-in-his-studio sense, tapping deep into his subconscious for his latest exhibition. “I was so hyper-focused on dreaming,” says the Miami-based Cuban painter. “I was like the stereotypical idea of an artist who’s withdrawn from society just to be in the studio and create from the world of his imagination.”
To say Piñeiro Bello’s imagination is vivid barely scratches the surface. Surreal, charged canvases fill Pace Gallery’s space in H Queen’s for “Solo Quiero Soñar (I Just Want to Dream)”. His signature nightscapes draw you into a dream realm where characters drift like ghosts through primordial, Caribbean-inspired landscapes.
His paintings mirror the impression Hong Kong has left on the artist, who’s visiting for the first time. “You have all these buildings with the mountains behind, and at night the neon lights shine from a dark background. It’s really surreal,” says Piñeiro Bello, who, jet-lagged, has been wandering the streets well into the night. “I’m amazed with the vibration of the city.”
“I wanted to do an exhibition that was only focused on the night realm, going into layers of dreams and alternate realities,” says Piñeiro Bello. “Fundamentally, I’m interested in ideas of origin, which always take you back to nature.”
Nature and the soul of the Caribbean lie deep in Piñeiro Bello’s subconscious and erupt from his fingertips, exploding onto canvas as the region’s flora, fauna, landscapes and histories. “There’s a reason Cuba was called the ‘pearl of the Caribbean’,” he says. “There’s a strong energy there and a lot of beauty.”
