A painter’s whimsical mind captures the surrealism of the quotidian.

By Julia Cooke

Alejandro Campins is living these days in his studio in downtown Havana, Cuba, amid stretched canvases propped against all available vertical surfaces. The one-room space, divided by drywall, with double-height ceilings and ornate moldings that bespeak the building’s early 20th-century provenance, is filled with art paraphernalia in semiorderly piles and stacks. The only area free of clutter is in front of the floor-to-ceiling French doors that open onto two small balconies. These doors mark the tenuous border between interior and exterior, letting in the sounds of shouting children, of new motorcycles and old engines; the smells of acrid diesel and of sweet, fresh coffee; and framing a view of the elderly trees in the front yard of the 1950s apartment complex opposite. The scene is bordered by the ornate metalwork of the balcony’s railing, shedding paint by the day. Read the full story