Since ancient times, there has been talk of the therapeutic properties of art in order to achieve a general balance between body and mind. This is precisely what the plastic artist Edgar González proposes in the trilogy "IT IS ONE, DON'T STRESS" (ES UNO, NO ES-TRES) , an exhibition that draws attention to the need to learn to control stressful situations through the consumption of plastic arts.
Edgar González Era (Cienfuegos, Cuba 1971) refuses to allow the stressful elements that inhabit everyday life to interrupt his life and nest in his being. To avoid this he proposes the best medicine, one that has no contraindications: art. He is aware that artistic creation, when he knows how to touch the springs of subjectivity and imagery, can induce the viewer to favorable states of mind.
After a series of lectures on mental health and stressors given by Doctor of Psychiatry Raúl Gil Sánchez in 2019, Edgar González found new inspirations. “Doctor Gil's words illuminated my creation, there I was definitely convinced of the great social commitment that artists have. Art is therapy for those who consume it and for those who carry it out, ”says the artist.
This is how IT IS ONE, DON'T STRESS, a trilogy that had its first two exhibitions in July 2019 and March 2020 at the Félix Valera Cultural Center, prior to the confinement imposed by covid-19. However, the conceptual strength of the sample reaches a greater dimension during the months of isolation. If before society lived with high doses of stress, the pandemic came to reinforce them and cause others. The fear of going out, of getting sick or of our elders, having to postpone plans, since the main thing was to stay healthy.
Edgar González dedicated himself to creation, letting all his feelings, uncertainties, and even his fears flow onto the canvas, as he himself confesses. The result of more than a year of work in confinement was great. IT IS ONE, DON'T STRESS III was inaugurated virtually on October 10, as a tribute to World Mental Health Day. However, the commitment to carry out a face-to-face exhibition is still maintained, where the public can have a greater interaction with the works and the artist.
In each exhibition the maker sought to improve himself and for this he took the most difficult paths. While in the first exhibition he only revealed 10 pictorial works, for the second moment he included photography and in the last exhibition he also ventured into sculpture and installation, proposing to the viewer a variety of artistic manifestations with which to dialogue.
The artist maintains his cubist aura in the geometric outlines, the decomposition of the figures and the multiplicity of points of view. Marine universes, still lifes, women hidden between shapes and colors, sketches of possible scenarios are some of the themes of these latest creations that evade reality while giving harmony, happiness, liberation and hope.
Works such as Melodía Sars-Cov-Dos, Project # 1, Resilencia places the viewer before the possibility of ignoring the aggressive environments of the outside, transgressing the molds to blur the stressors. The artist firmly defends the idea that man as a social being is capable of self-control and creating new scenarios.
Edgar González is aware that art heals. In these times, the creator is committed to offering his work to the public, to lighten the demons that man carries in this society full of frivolous feelings and superficial expressions.
By Naimy Herrera, October 29, 2021
More about Edgar's artwork in this link
