Alexandre Arrechea made his name as part of Los Carpinteros. Which is to say he made his name disappear along with those of his fellow Carpinteros, Marco Antonio Castillo Valdés and Dagoberto Rodríguez Sánchez. The three artists began working behind their collective moniker back in 1994, and they became phenomenally, and anonymously, successful. The New York Museum of Modern Art, which acquired several of their drawings for the museum’s permanent collection starting in the late 1990s, describes Los Carpinteros as follows: “Through collective authorship, the group members engage in labor that is itself opposed to…the ideology of individual artistic genius.”

So when Arrechea decided to leave Los Carpinteros in July 2003, the question was: How do you set out on your own after you’ve spent a decade opposing the ideology of individual artistic genius? Answer: it isn’t easy, but if you work hard enough things will start to fall into place. Arrechea’s first solo project was “El Jardin de la Desconfianza” (The Garden of Mistrust), an epic installation in Los Angeles that required two years (2003-2005) from conception to completion. The central piece of the work was a whitewashed aluminum tree whose branches were outfitted with video cameras — “surveillance cameras,” as Arrechea saw it — which recorded spectators and broadcast them on the Internet.

“Mechanisms of vigilance and control” — that’s how Arrrechea describes the major focus of his solo work up to and including “La habitación de todos” (The Room of All, 2009), his project for the 10th Havana Biennial. The timeliness of this piece is astounding. It’s a sculpture of a house that expands or contracts according to, respectively, the rise or fall of the Dow Jones Industrial Index. “Each point of rise or fall of the Dow Jones Industrial will reflect in greater or lesser spaciousness of the rooms of the house,” Arrechea explained in an email shortly before the Biennial got under way.

While his work typically resonates with contemporary meaning, it can also be amusing. Or alarming. Or both at once. Like the giant wooden hand grenade he made with Los Carpinteros. Or his photograph of a black man struggling to carry a load of white bricks that hide his face and obscure his identity.