Rafael Domenech was born in 1989 in Havana, Cuba. In 2009, he graduated from the National Academy of Fine Arts “San Alejandro.”
About:
Having grown up and been educated in a socialist system, an interest for architectural spaces and public propaganda naturally defined the foundation for Domenech’s early work. Rafael worked for a year as an assistant at a planning office in a section that dealt with political propaganda. During this time in Cuba, he was included in different shows at the Wifredo Lam Centre for Contemporary Art, the Havana Biennale and the Centro de Desarrollo de las Artes Visuales.
Untitled, 2017.
In 2010, Domenech arrived in the United States, and a year after enrolled in the New World School of the Arts, graduating in the 2015. This transition and process of geographical relocation and cultural integration was transformational, quickly broadening the influences and interests of the artist. As one, Rafael concerns squarely study the sensitivity of perception and the changes brought forth within a context of time and the physicality of elements.
Untitled, 2017.
These spatial relationships and concerns began as a rebellion to the artist’s own history and earlier artistic practice: the compulsion of having a story to tell was replaced by more personal and fundamental considerations and theories. Supplanting these early notions was a commitment to an essential interaction and integration of work, viewer, and space to form an absolute, overall experience. Domenech’s work is then perceived complete only when it assimilates itself into a specific context, accepting surroundings rather than refusing or fighting them.
Scanned Archives, 2016.
Domenech’s work has recently been exhibited at the Bronx Museum of the Arts, New York; Artium Museum in Vitoria, Spain; Fredric Snitzer Gallery, Miami; the Rockefeller Foundation, New York; The Mordes Collection, Palm Beach. In 2015, Rafael was the recipient of the Tulsa Artist Fellowship and the Cintas Fellowship.