Abel Barroso (born 1971, Pinar del Río, Cuba) graduated from the Instituto Superior de Arte de la Habana in 1995 and studied at the Banff Center for the Arts in Alberta, Canada, and at the University of South Florida.
Barroso is part of a generation of artists who aesthetically renovated Cuban printmaking in the early 90’s, transforming the traditional woodcut technique into three-dimensional objects. “Engraving is considered a conservative genre but since I started to build I decided to do something different with the technique, use its language, develop it in the way that interested me, finding new variations… I wanted to revolutionize its basis by, for example, making three-dimensional prints.”
The feelinig of identity in his work has been strengthened since 2008 by the exhibition ‘Se acabó la guerra fría a gozar con la civilización’ in Promo-Arte, Tokyo, although he had already sketched samples of unipersonal relations with respect to globalization, in the broadest sense of the word.His works conceptualize the human traffic to the borders of a developed world. The crafted images offer at the same time, a contradiction between tropical technology (humorous reference to the Caribbean fruit) and the coldness and absurdity of global manufacturing.
Barroso expoloring the social involvement endowing to the work a human dimension but, ironically, it is divided between the fractured spaces of its labyrinths, bridges and walls. Borders that remind us of the differences between the real and the mental cities (El Dorado). in 2011 will exhibit for the first time in France with ‘Murs réels, murs virtuels’ and returned to Europe in 2012 at the gallery Michel Soskine Inc., Madrid.
In the years 2013 to 2015 in addition to several singles exhbitions in the US and Japan, he participates in several colectives with other artists whom works on concepts about to the transiency of the human, with their borders and delimitations. His work will be exhibited in Art Brussels, ArcoMadrid, Palm Springs Fine Art Fair, Art Miami or Art Lima. The artist lives and works in Havana (Cuba).
In 2017 will be one of the main members of the Pavilion of Cuba, 57th Venice Biennial curated by José Manuel Noceda Fernández.
Abel barroso’s work is frequently exhibited in the United States, Latin America, Japan and Europe. The prestigious collections include the MoMA (USA), Whitney Museum (USA), Bacardi Foundation (USA), National Museum of Fine Arts (Cuba), Wifredo Lam Contemporary Art Center (Cuba), Minneapolis Art Museum editions 55 and 57 of the Venice Biennale, Banff Center for the Arts (Canada) and Federal Reserve Collection (USA), among others.
 graduated from the Instituto Superior de Arte de la Habana in 1995 and studied at the Banff Center for the Arts in Alberta, Canada, and at the University of South Florida.){kind=link}