About FANTOMAS, THE OUIJA AND THE OBLIGATION OF BLACK HOLES
Presentation remarks. Thesis. Higher Institute of Art (ISA)
By: Jorge Fernández
Director. National Museum of Fine Arts. Cuba.

After several months of silence between Yeny and I, I cannot help but remember the anguish and pressure that climbing the stairs of the Second Cape of the San Francisco de Asís Convent caused me.

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When I arrived at the White Room I was surprised. Many sensations went through my head. I then remembered the impact that Herman Hesse's character, Steppenwolf, had on him, that gramophone that disturbed the spiritual asceticism of his room, with that American music that clouded his exquisite taste in sound, to destroy what he considered firm and deeply marked lines. We had gone through the famous Zen anecdote; he had spent many days collecting leaves in the forest, and now all that was left was to put into practice everything we had learned together.

In Yeny Casanueva's work, the interest in physical exercise constitutes a permanent dialectic. I have not seen anyone with such an obsessive attitude towards knowledge. Throughout her career as a student I always saw her impassively searching, looking for information on all the disciplines that today intervene in the process of art. However, in her pieces, the use of physical energy is essential to achieve catharsis and ecstasy. Following this Borgesian method, she approaches these endless dances of her end to achieve maximum spiritual pleasure. She feels the same horror of trying to face the blank page, but this fear is only attenuated by the shock of work and the joy of facing fatigue.

The title of this work: Fantomas, the Ouija board and the obliquity of black holes; does not try to delve into the ideal of the absurdity of appearance; the genesis of restructuring takes on an empathetic character, emptying the original object of all meaning. Yeny builds an entire plot from successive juxtapositions. She creates a mesh that generates itself. The forms and visuality that are produced assume a singular autonomy. All this metamorphosis escapes the will of the artist to acquire its own life, its own existence. The classic principles of semiotic thought are subverted. The sign is replaced by Lacan's non-linear approach: no temple is erected above another, the whole is not grasped as a whole. The receiver is also compelled to order his own chaos.

This work breaks with dual approaches, it is neither one thing nor the other, we cannot speak of appropriation, rather of expropriation, the role of space is important in it. It is impossible for me to think of this piece without the place where it is located. I have seen several installations in this same place, and in my opinion, none of them turned this enclave into the work itself. These objects can only breathe from here, many were created for this kind of greenhouse. When this exhibition ends they can die or be resurrected in another project. We, the recipients, can no longer resist. This is the work or the true reality. Let us then think of the city Cant de Gerard and the impact that visiting the tomb of the famous Indian Montesuma, Altura de Sat, had on Octavio Paz, only under this trance could he write something like this: …I saw the world rest in itself, I saw the appearances and I called that half hour, reflection of the finite.

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