A catalogue essay for Florencio Gelabert: Displacements. IdeoBox, Miami

At first glance, these sculptures appear to be purely abstract works — as if Malevich’s white or black square had been torn while erupting into a three-dimensional, minimalist composition that manually replicates the effect of cracks and crevices in a stone surface. Yet an in-depth acquaintance with Gelabert’s work will direct the gaze to the distilled image of the rupture itself, which has become the solitary protagonist carrying the work’s entire narrative charge: a charge that builds on nostalgic images of Cuban ruins rooted in Gelabert’s personal biography, while referencing a global ecological cataclysm in a world that is on the verge of collapse.