A close look at the vitrine crowded with chemistry lab equipment in the 20th Street location of Yoan Capote’s exhibition “Collective Unconscious” reveals that the motley assortment of glass beakers, petri dishes and microscopes are printed with photos of crowds gathering at political events. Laboratorio is not the only piece that incorporates historical photography into sculptural installations; Charge (Miraculous Static), at the gallery’s 24th Street location, features photos similar to those in Laboratorio, this time wrapped around concrete sticks of dynamite. This elaborate, finely crafted exhibition includes work from the past four years of the Cuban artist’s career, spanning subtler objects, like white plastic cutting boards etched with landscapes and rubbed with blood, to Immanence, a large-scale bust of Fidel Castro made of rusty hinges Capote scavenged from old buildings in Havana.
Pictured: Yoan Capote, Laboratorio, 2012, mixed media including gelatin silver prints on glass vessels and scientific equipment in vitrine, dimensions variable. Courtesy of the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York.