Dalton Gata

From this week until next November 11, the Berlin gallery Peres Projects hosts Dalton Gata's new solo exhibition, Portrait for Loneliness. A work that addresses the motif of the passport photo through an interesting and bold use of colour, which contains an important meaning charged with social criticism. Far from being just one more image, these snapshots have a lot to do with a person's right to citizenship. From identification to segregation, many themes are hidden behind the paintings of the artist originally from Cuba.

The series of portraits in acrylic on cotton-linen canvas evidences a complete diversity. Individuals from different backgrounds with very different aesthetics now meet in the world-renowned gallery Peres Projects to reflect one of the great problems of society. Proposing expansive and queer forms of self-expression, self-actualization and acceptance, the creative once again makes creative language a mechanism of expression that does not need words to connect with the public, while consolidating a very characteristic personal artistic style.

Portrait for Loneliness addresses the motif of the passport photo, a constrictive genre of the image, one which classifies and segregates individuals based on nationality and presumed birthright. Segregation and marginalization are some of the issues that permeate his paintings, which draw on the vibrancy of Caribbean visual culture. All this while celebrating the racial diversity in Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic, continuing a line of work that began after graduating from a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Fashion Design in Altos del Chavón, and which has continued to be shown in individual and group exhibitions throughout the world.

After debuting at Peres Projects in 2020 with the Diálogos Remotos exhibition, Dalton Gata now returns to the gallery to let us delve into this new work, Portrait for Loneliness. You can visit it until next November 11 in Berlin.