Jose Manuel Fors
Bio
Jose Manuel Fors was born in 1956 in Havana, Cuba. He attended the San Alejandro Academy and the Institute of Museology, both in Havana, Cuba.
Fors has exhibited internationally in the United States, Spain and Japan. His work can be found at the collections of the Museum of Contemporary Art (Los Angeles); Los Angeles County Museum of Art (Los Angeles); The Museum of Fine Arts (Houston); The Museum of Fine Arts Havana and at Fundacion Museo de Bellas Artes (Caracas, Venezuela)among others.
Statement
Fors was a member of the legendary Volumen I (Volume I), and participated in their first exhibition in 1981 with an installation. During the Eighties, Fors produced installations that were ground-breaking for the Cuban context, and these are perhaps his best known works. Working with natural materials, such as leaves, was a challenge at a time, when something like that was not generally considered art in his country. His installations and other works of this period leaned towards a more conceptual approach. Instead of the universal and trite symbols of time, Fors chose decadence, as a metaphoric image through his dried leaves accumulations to render the passage of time. This was the backbone of his first solo exhibition titled Acumulaciones (Accumulations) in 1983. In those early years, he was engaged in exploring the concept of the passage of time and the evocative power of memory, and these installations proved to be the ideal visual solutions.
2.5 x 4m / 98.4 x 157 in
