Leonel Matheu’s First Survey Opens at the Frost Art Museum

Leonel Matheu, Pacific Times, 2009, Mixed on canvas, 8 x 12 inches, Private Collection

Miami. “Crossroads of the Dystopia,” the first major survey of Leonel Matheu’s career, opened at the Frost Art Museum last month. The show presents more than 20 years of work and provides a comprehensive overview of this artist’s most distinctive imagery.

Matheu graduated from the Institute of Graphic Design of Havana in 1987. In 1992 he settled in Miami and currently resides in Los Angeles. His works range from colored pencil drawings, ink on paper and oil on canvas, to video, multimedia installations and public installations. In describing his body of work, curator Janet Batet says, “If a single symbol could summarize the iconic work of Leonel Matheu, it would be the enigmatic head, a sort of dome, that appears as a constant throughout his work. It serves as a self‐portrait and collective portrayal of a nation marked by diaspora and dystopia. This symbol embodies the symptoms and stigma of contemporary global society. With a masterful use of the synthetic graphic design language, Matheu builds up a personal and yet universal iconography that he interweaves in intimate fables of our daily existence. Spirituality, technology, passion, solitude, dreams, chimeras and deceptions are at the core of his thoughtful body of work.”

Matheu’s works are part of the collections of various art museums, among them the Museum of Contemporary Art in North Miami, The Patricia and Phillip Frost Art Museum at Florida International University in Miami, the Lowe Art Museum at the University of Miami in Coral Gables, the Bass Museum of Art in Miami Beach, the Young At Art Museum in Davie, the Georgia Museum of Art at University of Georgia in Athens, the Mobile Museum of Art in Alabama, and the Radford University Art Museum in Virginia. “Crossroads of the Dystopia” is on view through Oct. 19.