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OMBA GALLERY: 'Riding Souls' by Yasiel Palomino Perez



Omba Gallery is delighted to host the second ‘Riding Souls’, a solo exhibition by Cuban artist, Yasiel Palomino Pérez. The critically acclaimed ‘Riding Souls’ or ‘Cabalgando Almas’ in the Spanish, was first exhibited in Havana, Cuba and, after falling in love with Namibia soon after his arrival in January this year, Pérez made the decision to exhibit the second ‘Riding Souls.’


Using oil and acrylic paint in combination with fine and large, emotional brushstrokes, Pérez depicts various breeds of horses moving restlessly across large canvases. Looking at the paintings, one can almost hear the horses snorting impatiently through flared nostrils and faintly, the dull pounding of their hooves on the earth.  He seeks perfection and Pérez found it entirely in the temperament and physical nature of the horse. The Spanish word for ‘soul’ is ‘alma’ and there on his canvases spirited equestrian phantoms gallop and storm seemingly from nowhere but actually from the soft under-belly of Latin American spirituality and nostalgia – sweet and warm but with a bitter aftertaste – towards the observer.

True to his anti-materialistic Cuban roots, Pérez says that once upon a time, before the advent and interference of technology, man and horse were one. In this relationship, the horse, a beautiful, majestic creature on its own, became the perfect metaphor for the yearnings of the human heart and has come to symbolise for him the essence of the soul (both man and beast) – the unselfconscious beauty as manifested by horses and the awe they inspire with their graceful movements. 

In the world of Yasiel Palomino Pérez a wild horse running without restraint is akin to the attainment of the highest form of freedom and freedom, he says with some intensity, is the core yearning of every human heart. ‘My horses,’ Pérez adds, ‘are always free.’ 

About Yasiel Palomino Perez

Yasiel Palomino Pérez hails from the town and province of Las Tunas, in the Colonia Blanca area of Cuba. He was born into a family of musicians, artists and poets. His father is a self-taught music teacher. A great influence on his life and art, this exhibition in particular, was the friendship he had shared with his horse, Fury, as a young child on the family farm in Colonia Blanca where he used to spend hours watching and drawing horses.

Pérez attended La Academia de Artes de la Provincia Las Tunas and graduated in 2006. He spent the next three years lecturing at his alma mater and dedicated his leisure time to producing his own artworks. It takes him on average between two days to a week to complete a painting and he doesn’t use any visual aids to draw his horses, preferring instead to draw on an immense vault of memories. His first solo exhibition, the first ‘Riding Souls’, took place in the capital of Havana in 2014, followed by group exhibitions thereafter in Russia and Germany.

Yasiel Palomino Pérez can be contacted via Danio Pita on 081 216 0850 or via e-mail: dapita84@yahoo.com.br . Mr. Pita fulfils the function of English interpreter to Yasiel Pérez in Namibia. The prices of these unique artworks of spiritual horses range between N$ 9 000 and N$ 16 000.00.



About Omba Gallery

Omba Gallery is a private commercial gallery situated in the heart of the city of Windhoek, the capital of Namibia. A small, intimate atrium, Omba is regarded as one of Namibia’s premium exhibition spaces with minimum security and physical barriers to create a pleasing ambiance in which art lovers and collectors can enjoy and view the highest quality of original art up close, in absolute privacy.

You are hereby invited to join us for the opening of this remarkable exhibition from Havana, Cuba, which will run at Omba Gallery from Tuesday, 21 April 2015, to the 5th of May, 2015 and to meet the artist.

For more information about this exhibition, please contact:

Shareen Thude

Manager: Namibia Craft Centre and Omba Gallery

Tel: (061) 242 222 / 081 124 0982



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