Dumonteil Gallery New York is pleased to announce its first solo exhibition of Cuban artist Rubén Fuentes (born in Mantanzas, Cuba, 1980) at its flagship Park Avenue location in New York.

Rubén Fuentes grew up in a mountainous region of Cuba where he drew inspiration for his large scale works on paper and canvas. For this series of new works all made within the last year and presented under the title "The Sixth Extinction", Fuentes worked on meticulously detailed ink, acrylic and oil compositions. Alarmed by the fact that humans are causing what the artist sees as "the sixth extinction" of the flora and the fauna, Fuentes conceived this exhibition as a tribute to extinct animal species, and "a call to keep alive those who are still there." Among the many figures that appear in the artist's anthropomorphic landscapes are the Dodo, the Giant Moa, the Big Penguin, the Tasmanian Tiger, the Pyrenean Ibex, the Western Black Rhino, the Eastern Cougar, the Galapagos Turtle, and the Mexican Grisly Bear.

These animals are represented "mountain sized" seemingly emerging form a distant past to reassert their long due status as a totemic power amongst living beings, in particular humans who are represented "small and helpless, facing the greatness of nature." Other groups of paintings deal with philosophical themes familiar to the artist, while others are connected with Shamanic ancestral practice. It is the artist deepest desire with these works to contribute to an awareness of the ecological crisis facing humanity, and "to rekindle the need to act as long as there is still time."