Jack Shainman Gallery is pleased to announce Mental States, the first solo exhibition at the gallery of new work by Cuban artist Yoan Capote. The exhibition opens October 14th, and runs through November 13th. A reception for the artist will take place on Thursday, October 14th, 6-8pm.

Capotes work is the result of psychological analysis of our daily experiences and issues related to the broader social and human experience. The artists process creates analogies between the visual poetry of objects and the intangible world of the mind. Capote utilizes various media and both traditional and unconventional materials, while also exploring multisensory possibilities in installation, photography and video.

Mental States is inspired by the artists first experience with American culture. Reflecting on fast living and the pursuit of success, where the prevailing fantasies of seduction have transformed into permanent obsessions or delusions. Capote is interested in the multiplicity of meanings that stimulate our thinking and internal discussions on behavior relating to social, political and economic interest.

The paintings made using fish hooks, oil paint, canvas and burlap use the materials as subjects in a primal symbolic dichotomy of attraction and repulsion. Using images that range from the iconic, postcard-like tropes to a seascape representing the artists first visage of America as a child, Capote plays with issues of obsessive desire and the risk and drama of migration characterized by the Cuban imagination.

Never solely situated in one geographical space, Capotes work uses the local as a means of addressing the intimate and the personal while investigating constructions that are based in power and difference. Yoan Capote translates the poetic longing of those who are dislocated from their place of identification, representing the contemporary individual as aberration experiencing forced mobility and alienation.

Yoan Capote lives and works in Havana, Cuba. He has exhibited extensively abroad, including in Portugal, Spain, Switzerland, France, England, Panama, Cuba and the United States. He participated in the 7th Havana Biennial and has been the recipient of numerous awards including International Fellowship Grant from the Guggenheim Foundation, a UNESCO Prize, Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant, Vermont Studio Center Fellowship and a residency at the Brownstone Foundation in Paris.