Kcho (Alexis Leyva Machado) has attracted international attention since winning the grand prize at South Korea's Kwangju Biennial in 1995. Internationally recognized of his monumental and evocative sculpture, installations and paintings, Kcho is an artist inextricably connected to his childhood home, Island of Youth, Cuba, located miles from the mainland. Water defines all aspect of Kcho's life and his oeuvre is populated with sculpture constructed from found objects associated with the sea, boats, oars, driftwood, and fishing nets. He often depicts these objects in his painted and drawn canvases, creating a variable lexicon of island life where all residents must content with the ocean.

The artist's strong influence by Russian Avant-garde and his fascination with Tatlin's utopia project "the Monument of Third international" makes his art work even more special for Articulate Fund

Today, Kcho is celebrated as the island's most internationally established artist since Wifredo Lam (1902-82). In the last decade, his poetic and sometimes nostalgic works have been featured in more than 50 group shows and biennials around the world and in 15 solo exhibitions at such venues as the Museum of Contemporary Art (MoCA) in Los Angeles (1997), the Jeu de Paume in Paris (1998), and the Palacio de Cristal at the Reina Sofia (2000).

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Read: the ARTiculate Interview with Kcho

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Kcho
La Conversation, 2005
Installation: Chairs, table, lamp
hight: 310cm

Provenance
May 14-18, 2008 Presented as a special project at Art Moskva




Kcho
Naufragios recientes, 2005
Mixed media
152x198 cm

Museums collections:

Kcho's work may be found in the collection of many important public institutions, including Museo de Arte Contemporaneo Sofia Imber, Caracas; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reine Sofia, Madrid; Museum Ludvig, Cologne; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; The Museum of Modern Art, New York, among many others.

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