Meet Marlon Portales—a Cuban-born artist with a knack for turning bold ideas into breathtaking visuals.
Now based in Miami, Portales combines the weight of history with the lightness of imagination. He studied at the Academia Profesional de Artes Visuales Tiburcio Lorenzo in Pinar del Río and earned his BFA from ISA (Instituto Superior de Arte) in 2018.
He has participated in prestigious residencies, including Art OMI (New York, 2015), Illy & UNIDEE (Italy, 2016), and Fountainhead Residency (Miami, 2018).
While Portales works with many mediums like installation, video, photography, and performance, his main focus is painting. His solo show, The Last Man, just wrapped at Spinello Projects in Miami.
The show addressed issues surrounding masculinity, identity, relationships, and eroticism. The work is illuminating, full of vibrant color, movement, and organic forms, creating a truly sensational collection of work.
He has held several solo exhibitions in the United States and Cuba before “The Last Man”:
"Poems of Nature" at Pan American Art Projects in Miami, "The Voyeur" at 532 Gallery Thomas Jaeckel in New York, and in 2018, "Museum" at Galería Orígenes in Havana, Cuba.
