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Talismans from the Edge: Carlos Martínez León at MIFA Gallery
On view from May 19th through August 27th, 2022 at Miami’s MIFA Gallery, Journey Into the Unseen — a solo show of twelve paintings — brings viewers on an enigmatic spiritual journey as seen through the eyes of Carlos Martínez León.
A young artist grows up in Venezuela in the 1990s, finds his way to Italy, finds his way to Miami. It’s a journey riddled with passports, a papaleo of staggering proportion that propels his feet across oceans–and the pencils and paper in the backpack he wears have nothing to do with the documents needed to kindle a new life. They aren’t just to sign apartment leases in different languages or to scribble the phone numbers of new contacts. He carries pencils and paper to draw.
He recalls playing with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles toys as un jovencito, and years later, the characters’ names come back to haunt him. But they aren’t prickly, uninvited ghosts; rather, the names are chiseled into the wall-mounted sculptures lining the Uffizi’s courtyard, chiseled under the feet of the artists whom they depict in stone. He stands in the courtyard. He’s come from Maracaibo to Firenze, to Florencia. He’s not just searching for the ghosts of Raphael, Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Donatello. He’s searching for the fragments they left, the works they breathed and brushed and buffed into life, the…
