Cuban printmaker Isolína Límonta specializes in collagraphs - prints made with plates that have collaged materials on them. Her show at Galeria Cubana is lush and dreamy in hue and texture, and even her drawings are built upon layers of imagery and pattern. The layering suggests subtexts of longing and levels of consciousness and identity in the figures she portrays. The collagraph “Alfonsina y el mar (Alfonsina and the sea)’’ is soaked with hot hues. A neon-orange figure in a flaring, elaborate up-do has a powder-blue face streaked and patterned with green and orange tendrils. She faces another figure, this one upside-down in a purple-green mosaic, with a floral pattern rising up her torso. More plant life fills the ground between them. A heart floats between the two women. Some of the works can veer too deeply into yearning - this is a theme that crops up often in Cuban art, and may reflect the sometimes difficult life of an artist in an isolated island nation. But when the color kicks in, the works rivet the eye.
Download: Boston Globe Reviews Isolina Limonta's Lush Dreamscapes