One Work: Juan Miguel Cabrera
Break Room (1 & 2), 2018, watercolor and ink on paper, 30 x 30 in. each
[Image description: Two images of the same break room with a small kitchen counter and a table with two chairs. The furniture is lightly outlined and seems to float in the middle of the square picture plane. The image on the left bears a wash of bright yellow and green, and the one on the right a swath of pink and purple.]
In Break Room (1 & 2), Juan Miguel Cabrera uses the traditional medium of watercolor on paper to examine the modern archetype of the commercial break room. The very term “break room” promises respite, while more often than not referring to a space starkly devoid of relaxing characteristics. Cabrera holds a life-long affinity for recalling the details of such humdrum architectural spaces and employs intentional painting processes to point them out. Locations that many consider generic and worth ignoring, to Cabrera, attract attention and remain in his memory, often finding their way into dreams.
Break Room (1), 2018, watercolor and ink on paper, 30 x 30 in.
The images in the diptych depict the same room, featuring a single table with chairs, cabinets, and banal architectural outlines. Cabrera’s bright Post-It colors and the use of the double image invite a closer look. In glancing back and forth, differences are revealed in the way the same objects have been rendered, yet there is nothing about the space to tell us about its users. No interior plants or kitchen items, no chair left slightly askew. Areas of the paper that have not been coated by color contain little-to-no visual information— this intentional exclusion of detail echoes the type of space being depicted (one that is meant to be used and promptly forgotten). Cabrera’s own dreams echo here as well, with certain spatial details remaining clear while others have faded away.
Break Room (2), 2018, watercolor and ink on paper, 30 x 30 in. each
Break Room (1 & 2), like nearly all of Cabrera’s work, is anything but easily produced. The listed medium of watercolor serves as a reminder that these are original paintings and not simple duplicates. Here, the color outlines have been meticulously hand stenciled and painstakingly painted in multiple wet layers. This careful, time-consuming labor quietly subverts the depicted content. Much care has been taken by the artist in intentionally reproducing the image twice over, while the design of the break room space itself appears careless and flat.
The content of the work is, perhaps, not the space itself but rather its emotional consequence. While I have not been in this exact space, its emptiness is familiar. I have occupied a functional room like this before, built for purpose and stripped of any decorative ties to past histories and to the natural world. For me, Cabrera serves up a critique of modern corporate space, built quickly and often intentionally left blank. His use of the traditionally high-culture medium of watercolor on paper and the care with which he paints underscore the impersonal nature of corporate culture, alluding to its very human costs.
— Eleanor Greer, artist. Greer was a participant in the 2022 HereIn Writers Workshop.