Carlos Garaicoa is the first US survey of recent work by Cuban artist Carlos Garaicoa, who addresses Cuba’s politics and ideologies through the examination of modern architecture. Presenting a selection of new works created specially for the exhibition, Carlos Garaicoa opens in ICA’s second-floor galleries on January 20 through March 25, 2006.

Organized by The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles Associate Curator Alma Ruiz, Carlos Garaicoa features 12 works that use architectural models, renderings, drawings, videos, and photographs to articulate the failed outcome of social and architectural programs in Cuba. Adopting the city of Havana as his laboratory, Garaicoa has been working since the early 1990s using a multidisciplinary approach that includes architecture and urbanism, narrative, history, and politics. His works are charged with provocative commentary on issues such as architecture’s ability to alter the course of history, the failure of modernism as a catalyst for social change, and the frustration and decay of 20th-century utopias.

Curated by Alma Ruiz, associate curator of The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.