Onay Rosquet
Young people have an outstanding position in contemporary Cuban art; they are the vanguard in the different ways of expressing art and tend to participate in all sorts of trends. Onay Rosquet’s work – which initially focused on characters and later on objects carefully reproduced in his drawings and paintings – attracts attention in an extraordinary way. In his first series on objects they appeared lonely, abandoned, but loaded with nostalgia that revealed much about them. At present, the young painter, by portraying accumulations of objects, constructs stories by arranging the objects into a new context. These collections are not coincidental; they are the result of a sensual and intellectual selection process of his affective memory.
The artist neither follows groups or trends, nor does he conform to preconceived guidelines or obeys art market decrees and he does not comply with the preferences of sectors that set the course of the artistic activity. Onay does not produce, he creates, and the results of these creations distinguish him from his peers. He goes as far as to articulate a fable, transmit a state of mind, evoke a moment, while obliquely referring to social tensions and events. A laudable merit of his is to glance at a world of elements that speaks by itself from its silent presence. All accomplished by careful implementation because he spares no rigor when reproducing that world which he transfers to the canvas and transforms it into refined art.