Jan Valdés Téllez

JAN VALDÉS TÉLLEZ (Havana, Cuba, 1979).
"The tension of the bored", 2024.
Oil on canvas.
Attached certificate of authenticity issued by the artist.
Signed and dated in the lower central area. Signed and titled on the back.
Measurements: 100 x 120 cm.
In the words of the artist himself "In La tensión de los aburridos, a work belonging to the series "El jardín de al lado", Jan Valdés Téllez captures with clinical precision and theatrical sensitivity the psychological density of everyday gesture. La tensión de los aburridos captures a contained scene that, beneath its apparent stillness, vibrates with psychic tension. The minimal choreography of boredom is transformed here into pictorial language. From the contrast between explicit figuration and the limits of the abstract, Valdés Téllez plays with the limits of gesture: the faces are defined, but the environment vibrates with an echo of diffuse matter. There is a gestural impulse - in the folds, in the edges of the armchair, in the shadow that does not end up being defined, where the body threatens to dissolve in the stain.
From a tradition that combines Spanish baroque painting with Latin American expressive realism, Valdés Téllez creates a work that moves between the intimate and the allegorical. The color - warm, dense, restrained - reinforces the sensation of emotional enclosure. There is no explicit narration: only a suspended atmosphere, as if the characters were waiting for an order, a rupture or a confession. Here, the drama is not external, but interior: a minimal scene that sustains, in its apparent immobility, a universe of affective and symbolic tensions. The work puts two forces in tension: the narrative clarity of the scene and the ambiguity of its visual atmosphere. In this emotionally saturated space, boredom becomes a form of passive violence".
The artist Jan Valdés Téllez studied at the renowned San Alejandro National Academy of Fine Arts in Havana, one of the most prestigious institutions in the Cuban art world. After completing his studies in 2004, he began a prolific professional career that has combined pictorial practice with sustained teaching, consolidating himself as an active figure in the Cuban contemporary art scene.
Since his beginnings, Valdés Téllez has developed an oeuvre marked by the exploration of the everyday, approached from a critical and poetic point of view that is manifested both in his figurative compositions and in his more symbolic approaches. His production has been the subject of numerous solo and group exhibitions, both in his native country and internationally.
Among his most outstanding solo exhibitions are "Una mirada cubana" (Stoa Gallery, Estepona, Malaga, 2024), a show that reaffirms his presence in the Spanish art circuit, and "En la nada todo cabe" (2020), presented at the Esto no es un café gallery, in Havana, where he deployed a visual reflection on the ambiguity of emptiness and memory. In previous years, he has had other relevant exhibitions such as "Por el lado más salvaje de la vida" (Por el lado más salvaje de la vida) (Centro de Desarrollo de las Artes Visuales, 2015), "Inventario" (Fundación Ludwig, 2009), and "Extraordinario de la vida ordinaria" (Galería 23 y 12, 2008), all of them in Cuba. Likewise, his work has been present in international exhibition spaces since early stages of his career, as evidenced by "Un poco de todo" (Murcia, Spain, 2005).
At the same time, he has participated in important group exhibitions that have contributed to the international projection of his work. Among them are "Mi Pekado" (Studio Arriaza 11, Madrid, 2024), "Héroes y villanos" (Centro de Cultura Contemporánea Cárcel Vieja, Murcia, 2022), "Por unos dólares más" (Toronto Art Fair, 2008), and "Anuario de pintores noveles" (Galerías Fivars, Alicante, 2008). He has also been part of significant group exhibitions in Cuba, such as the III Salón "Panorama 42" at the Wilfredo Lam Gallery (2006), and the I Salón Internacional de San Alejandro (2003).