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Los Carpinteros
Los Carpinteros (Cuban artist collective, 1994)
Tanque le Aqua, 2002
Watercolor and graphite on paper
Gift of Berkus Family Collection
Los Carpinteros (The Carpenters) is a Havana-based Cuban collective formed in 1994 by Marco Castillo (b. 1971), Dagoberto Rodríguez (b. 1969), and Alexandre Arrechea (b. 1970 -- Arrechea departed the group in 2003). The three artists created this collective as a renouncement of individual authorship, seeking to connect with older guild traditions. Exploring the intersection of society and art, Los Carpinteros mixes architecture, design, and sculpture to create work based in formalism, conceptualism, and activism. Their drawings are inspired by the physical world, but convey both the functional and nonfunctional, the realistic and playful. As noted in the title, Tanque le Aqua looks like a water tank, but the futuristic shape seems to suggest that it is a piece of furniture -- perhaps a “highboy” in the shape of a water tower.