Jan Valdés Téllez

JAN VALDÉS TÉLLEZ (Havana, Cuba, 1979).
"El duelo", 2024.
Oil on canvas. Triptych.
Attached certificate of authenticity issued by the artist.
Signed in the lower right area. Signed, dated and titled on the back.
Measurements: 90 x 60 cm; 90 x 180 cm (total).
El Duelo, is a work that belongs to the series, "Relatos de extrarradio", with it the artist develops a gallery of real and imaginary characters that inhabit the border between the folkloric and the everyday, the popular and the cultured. In this series, Jan Valdés Téllez observes with lucidity -and a bit of mockery- figures that seem to come out of a domestic altar or a neighborhood after-dinner conversation. El duelo is a piece where figurative painting meets a technical and symbolic exploration of the contemporary, between tradition and modernity. In the center, a naked woman -immutable, frontal, secular deity- opens her red cape in a gesture of power. At her sides, two bullfighters with bull heads -hybrid creatures, cultural minotaurs- face her as if the plaza were an altar, a theater and a mirror. Together, they configure an inverted, operatic ritual scene: a confrontation without violence, a symbolic sacrifice.
The background is especially remarkable: a dense grandstand, composed of names, phrases, slogans and narrative graffiti. Painted with short, stippled, deliberately vibrant brushstrokes, it is visually reminiscent of 19th century pointillism, but subverts it. Here, the brushstroke does not create an impressionistic light, but an atmosphere of social saturation: noise, judgment, collective surveillance.
Formally, the work exhibits a remarkable pictorial control: the figures are modeled with academic precision, but endowed with contemporary theatricality. The scene recalls both bullfighting iconography and the power structures staged by artists such as Paula Rego, Leon Golub or even Neo Rauch. The work dialogues with multiple traditions - tableau, mythology, political theater - and at the same time breaks with the closed figure: the boundaries between symbol, body and decoration dissolve in a painting that thinks as it represents.
The artist Jan Valdés Téllez trained 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).