ERNESTO PILOTO
Artist statement
My work as an artist is about life reflections, and how can we transform our attitudes through a simple action (being aware). I constantly reflect on how we live, the social conditioning and how this can be imprinted in our conscience.
I tend to utilize black and white as a symbol of balance/contrast of our interior self. It also represents life contradictions/opposites. Also, the use of symbols helps me mirror different reflections and concepts like self actualization, moral sense, consciousness, and the essence of human existence in a new -Era revolution-. I have incorporated the human heart and the brain as a way of showing “what are we?” These symbols evoke thoughtful reflection in order to answer many of our uncertain paths in life.
Furthermore, an important aspect of my work is the reflection on how tools like technology has reshaped us and has guide our anxiety of evolution into the new unknown world of human perception in today’s society.
To summarize, my work tries to advocate for the personal initiative of taking control of our destiny—staying close to who we really are. Rejecting any source of manipulation and to listen to our inner self is essentially within our reach.
Ernesto Piloto
Biography
I was born in Havana City, Cuba in 1975. As a child, one of my favorite toys was a crayon carton full of colors. Those crayons were my greatest treasure and escape from the reality of limitations of my surroundings by allowing me to express myself freely.
Throughout my adolescent years, I nurtured the artist within me thinking that I would study Fine Arts someday. I frequently visited art exhibitions and learned how to draw urban settings and landscapes which was my first step into the world of Art.
At twenty one years old, after finishing my military service, I started studies at the National Culinary Arts School where I got a degree in Culinary Arts as a Pastry Chef. Years later, I participated in the Second International Culinary Festival held in Matanzas, Cuba where more than thirty five countries exhibited their culinary art work. At the festival, I worked with a remarkable Cuban sculptor named Ramon Casas. All these experiences at the festival, kept me in touch with my dream of becoming an artist. Even though at the time I was just collecting flavors and colors that would ultimately pave my way to my true passion, drawing.
A while after, I was accepted at San Alejandro fine Arts School, which is the most prestigious and oldest art school in Cuba. Combining colors and molding shapes, I finally got the required focused training and expert guidance. After my studies I moved from surrealism to conceptualism. Each piece of my artwork was a continuing search for new ways to express myself.
I participated in several collective exhibitions with school with my colleagues where my work could stand out with a characteristic, personal touch and value. Several years later, I became part of the Cuban socio-cultural movement.
My emigration to the U.S.A. in 2007 started a transitional period of adjustment and redefinition of my work and personal life enriching my views and concepts. I rediscovered charcoal and cardboard. I combined my motive with different symbols and objects representing contradictions, emotions, and situations of our daily life. These symbols and objects reflect different approaches that people look for when they need to solve life situations, either intuitively or as a result of more mature experiences.
I chose the human figure as an artistic motive, controlling, beautiful, and defiant, to represent in general, temptation, indecisiveness of wanting things and surrender of our will to the big social rule of power and money.
