Light in the Clouds (2024) Sculpture by Philippe Toneut

Oscar Felipe Toneut Morales Born on May 1, 1995 in Havana, Cuba, in the midst of the country's economic decline. A social event that has affected a people for 28 years, which brought about a psychological change in the artist at the age of 12 that led him to express himself through art in a self-taught way.

His parents, upon seeing his talent, tried to direct him to the cradle of Cuban art, making an effort to enroll him in the most prestigious school in the country, "San Alejandro".

After several attempts and being denied the possibility of entering San Alejandro, he managed to begin his studies at the School of General Arts Instructors in 2010; this school is based on the implementation of revolutionary principles and ethics, which planted in the artist a desire to express his longing for a change in the government system. During his studies at the institution, his dreams of free expression were overshadowed and silenced due to the lack of freedom of expression implemented in government schools.

After completing his studies, he specialized in plastic arts at the Casa de la Cultura in the Cerro municipality, where his interest in surrealism and the deformation and reinterpretation of reality that reinvents a new subjective and metaphorical world began. It was at that moment that the artist began to collect all the elements and facts that have marked his life and capture them in his works. At this point he begins his professional career and starts creating his first works.

Felipe had a childhood full of confusion. His father decided to abandon his mother when he was not even born, so he grew up surrounded by only two women, his mother and his sister. Because of this, the artist always tended to focus on seeing beauty as only women know how to see it.

Thus, with an effeminate character and tastes, Felipe only represents women in his paintings with whom he reinterprets and describes himself, just as the artist expresses in a phrase that I quote in his graduation thesis: "Woman is the purest and most sincere being that can be represented in a plastic work."

Needles, balloons and childish objects are elements that the artist frequently depicts with a very symbolic character. The balloon, for example, on most occasions represents his brief childhood interrupted by obligations and objectives that brought with them an early maturity and focus. The needles represent the danger of bad influences that we sometimes allow to affect and modify our essence and decision-making.

For the artist, the theory that there are parallel worlds is always palpable in his work, he almost always tries to give a primordial place to these hypothetical dimensions that come together in time and space at crucial moments in our lives where we make decisions and things happen to us that will mark us forever.

• Nationality: CUBA
• Date of birth : 1995
• Artistic domains:
• Groups: Contemporary Cuban Artists