Kcho Uses Books, Boats to Relate Cuban Conditions

“Todo Cambia,” at the Museum of Contemporary Art, marks the United States solo debut of a 27-year-old Cuban artist. He was born Alexis Levya Machado but shortened his name to Kcho.

His installation, curated by MOCA’s Alma Ruiz, is divided into thematically related parts. Each occupies one of two large, interconnected galleries. At a glance there is no artistic relationship between sections and no suggestion that they need to be perused in any particular order. One consists of racks of used books, the other of life-size, handmade, water-borne conveyances.

There are a rowboat, kayak, wind-surfing sail and inner-tube lifesaver as well as drum-like shapes joined to suggest jury-rigged rafts. It doesn’t take long to associate all of it with recent history and the plight of the Cuban boat-people. If, however, one reads the ensemble as representing Kcho’s personal longing to escape from Fidel Castro’s islands, it’s not an optimistic fantasy.

All of the boats are made from open wire mesh. Most are filled in with a thick layer of terra cotta clay. Apparently sun-dried, the mud is cracked and eroded, imbuing the boats with the appearance of aboriginal sculpture. They could never sink because they’d never float. One notes in the catalog that their pedestals are actually the sorts of worktables used in Cuba’s art schools. Musings on a flight to freedom are mixed with a sense of inert nostalgia. In English todo cambia means “everything changes” but Kcho betrays misgivings about that truth.

The book section is made up of flimsy wood shelves arranged in a roughly elliptical ring. Volumes are inside the open-ended enclosure. Most are placed facing viewers showing illustrations and titles on the worn covers. Most are in Spanish, a few in English. There is a variety of subjects, but every one of 32 sections of rack includes more than one book on Castro, Che Guevara, a history of Cuba, a Marxist tract or a book devoted to the Cuban revolutionary hero Jose Marti. Clearly Kcho wants to emphasize the prevalence of communist polemical literature available in Havana.

The outline arrangement of the shelves is rather boat-like. Racks resemble wooden supports like those used under canvas stretched for painting. Book and boat sections come to echo one another. The whole becomes a rumination on the idea of how hard it is to leave one’s homeland even when it’s in bad shape. It conveys the particular dilemma of the artist in choosing between staying to express collective pain or going into an emptiness of freedom.

If that message is clear, a harder nut to crack is the question of why “Todo Cambia” doesn’t quite come off artistically. Guesswork based on catalog reproductions suggests that Kcho’s real forte is not the overt political preoccupations suggested by the books. It’s very likely that his best work comes from the quite compelling connection between aboriginal art and technology expressed by his clay boats. It looks like this installation doesn’t represent the artist at his best.

* Museum of Contemporary Art, 250 S. Grand Ave.; through Feb. 8, closed Mondays, (213) 626-6222.