1999 is an exhibition of works produced by Luis Cruz Azaceta (Havana, 1942), during the twelve months preceding the turn of the millennium. The exhibition contains thirty-two works, including paintings, sculpture, assemblage, drawings, and photographs. It is Azaceta's second one-person exhibition at CAC, the first having taken place in 1993.

Azaceta has made New Orleans his home since the early 1990s, and could be the city's most internationally renowned contemporary visual artist. However, despite gallery and museum shows throughout Europe as well as North and South America, not to mention five one-person exhibitions at Arthur Roger Gallery in the past decade, Azaceta's work is not widely known in his adopted city.

One reason this might be true is that Azaceta is, and always has been, a complete maverick in terms of how his personal artistic style relates to the prevailing winds of artistic fashion. His art does not look like anyone else's, and he is a lover of visual experiments who often works in several media at once. Azaceta also has a marked tendency to combine materials in unexpected ways, as with his extended series of photographs mounted on twisted metal bead. Last but not least, he works constantly, is extremely prolific, and he prefers, for the most part, to be left alone to do his thing.

Besides offering a rare close-up look at an artist's work, 1999 is also meant to suggest a slightly unconventional approach toward the subject of the artist's role in history. One way of framing this argument is that for many artists today, the constant emphasis on producing new work raises an inherent contradiction. On the one hand, they are expected to be as contemporary as possible, in terms of making work that reflects the times in which they live. But artists are also expected to create things that will outlast their time, so that the value of those objects is sustained, even long after their maker is no longer active.

Because most of what he produces is not publicly exhibited -- even when he has several one-person exhibitions a year Ð Azaceta is the ideal example of an artist whose combined exhibition history represents only the very tip of the iceberg in terms of his overall output. Generally speaking, the best way to experience art is up close, and in the present exhibition, a single year's production from just one local artist in the very recent past can unearth completely unexpected treasures that clearly have every intention of standing the test of time.

Curated by Dan Cameron.

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