Cuarteto

A quartet is a musical composition written for an ensemble of four musicians or singers. If it were composed of at least one breath, a bow and a percussion instrument, it would resemble a small orchestra.

Four are the languages spoken in ARTE CONTINUA, the space that the Gallery opened on November 27, 2015, in Havana’s Chinatown. In a series of four complementary exhibitions, ARTE CONTINUA invited about twenty artists to work within its space. In fact, inspired by a sort of typically Cuban expertise, ARTE CONTINUA has gradually occupied, and ultimately filled, each one of its
corners.
The first artists invited to show their works here were the Cubans Alejandro Campins, Elizabet Cerviño, Carlos Garaicoa, Susana Pilar Delahante Matienzo, Reynier Leyva Novo and José Yaque.

Within ARTE CONTINUA, the group found the story of Aguila de Oro, an Art Deco cinema theater, built in the ‘50s and recently abandoned. In this sense, their show, Anclados en el territorio, stood for both the first exploration of the possibilities of the former cinema theater and its revitalization.
At the beginning of the year, the Italian artists Loris Cecchini, Ornaghi & Prestinari and Giovanni Ozzola inserted new artworks within the frame of Anclados en el territorio. Their work not only transformed the space, but also put into contact ARTE CONTINUA and Galleria Continua’s first space, San Gimignano (Italy). The new show, named YOU + ME = US, opened on January 9, 2016.
On April 28, with Ensemble, Galleria Continua’s Francophone artists, Etel Adnan, Kader Attia, Daniel Buren and Pascale Marthine Tayou, joined the group. Therefore, their works have released into ARTE CONTINUA not only the French branch of the gallery, Galleria Continua Les Moulins, but also the identities of the countries of origins of Adnan, Attia and Tayou, which are Lebanon,  Algeria, and Camaroon respectively. Ensemble has also participated in the Month of French
culture in Cuba with a series of conferences and events.

On July 2, 2016 with the opening of Cuarteto ARTE CONTINUA presents in Cuba the works of the Chinese artists Ai Weiwei, Chen Zhen, Gu Dexin, Kan Xuan, Qiu Zhijie, Sun Yuan & Peng Yu and Chen Zhen’s interview with Hans Ulrich Obrist. In addition, a site-specific installation by Gu Dexin will undergo, throughout the show, the processes of maturation and decomposition. In this context, while Gu Dexin’s work creates a space-time bond in between two former cinema theaters, Galleria Continua San Gimignano’s space and Águila de Oro, the exhibition stands as a bridge in between Cuba and China, ARTE CONTINUA and Galleria Continua Beijing.
Cuarteto is thus the fourth part of ARTE CONTINUA’s first concert. Increasingly heterogeneous, its orchestra has performed a symphony of four movements, the exhibitions, tuned to Galleria Continua’s four headquarters: San Gimignano, Beijing, Les Moulins and Habana. Moreover, Cuarteto and ARTE CONTINUA, in harmony and collaboration with the environment surrounding them, enhance its artistic potential. In such fashion, they promote a universal invite to “love differences”.
During its four exhibitions, ARTE CONTINUA organized conferences, workshops, performances and presentations by artists, critics and curators from Cuba and abroad. In addition, with Promenade á La Havane (2015) by Daniel Buren and Kamouflage (2016) by Pascale Marthine Tayou the Gallery has presented the city with numerous public art interventions.