Imágenes Infieles / Unfaithful Images is the title of the new solo show that Carlos Garaicoa has conceived for the spaces of Galleria Continua / San Gimignano.The exhibition is composed of a series of previously unseen works: Vertical and Sogniamo sulla superficie graffiata di un vetro (2021); Ciudad Archivo / Archive City (2020), a nucleus of recent sculptures in which the idea of the architecture of the city at night returns; S/T (Bend Building) a work in which Carlos Garaicoa plays with paper transforming it into sculpture. In the stalls area of the ex-cinema, the artist presents for the first time in Italy, Partitura, an installation developed over the last ten years thanks to a collaboration with seventy musicians and technicians. Conceived as a choral work, it’s the first interactive work by the Cuban artist.The reflection on urban and architectonic space has always been a way into more complex paradigms for Carlos Garaicoa, where present day history and the recent past is fragmented into signs, legacy and relationships. “A few years ago, the artist says, I visited the ruins of the ancient city of Armero and its landscape of houses buried in the mud that have given way to a nature full of spirits which ignores the sad history of the place. This visit to the city and its surroundings had a strong impact on me and it gave rise to a photographic series De la serie Armero / From the Armero series which pays homage to the more than 20.000 people that lost their lives in this tragedy.”Garaicoa’s artistic inspiration started with his curiosity for architecture, which was developed by peeking into architectural drawings he then went on to dismantle, chasing the tension to be found in the many human stories that have occurred over time, this and their immanent meanings also takes shape in the series Ciudad Archivo / Archive City. Here the buildings once again become the essential subjects of the dialogue between the individual and the urban environment, on each building there is a neon sign: Frases falsas / False phrases; J’ accusations; Corrupto Frio Invierno / Corrupt Cold Winter; Geo-Política / Geo-Politic are some examples. “Once again, explains Garaicoa, I have tried to recreate processes of abstraction, poetry and fragility through the cities (...). The inclusion of writing, as well as some narratives that reflect social and existential tensions through the written sign of the city, has been recurring throughout my career. My drawings on paper, as impossible architectural proposals for Havana and other cities, have shown this obsession and this search for the integration of the text both in the urban sign and in the graphic sign.”An A3 sheet of paper, cut and folded, in Garacoa’s hands is transformed into a fragment of a city. This cycle of drawings from the title S/T (Bend Building) evokes some sculptural gestures from the first Russian avantgarde and some other visual proposals from Brazilian Neoconcretism; trying to appropriate

itself within these forms, it creates a visual space that suggests both potential worlds and utopian ones.Partitura, the work installed in the stalls, represents another ring in this chain of urban travels. Carlos Garaicoa imagines a new type of orchestra with which he celebrates the potential of a unity created from diversity and the possibilities that come about from collaboration between cultures and genres: 40 street musicians, from different cultural backgrounds, abilities and musical traditions, interpret together the musical score composed by Estaban Pubela. The city borrows the sound of wind, string and percussion instruments and the voices of singers, to give us an archive of urban sounds within an unusual and unexpected visual space. “A game of gazes and listening, designed to be a space that changes randomly by offering different journeys and encounters within a city in constant transformation”, the artist comments.