Jorge Pardo
DADS CUBA
15 November 2014 – 10 January 2015
1301PE is pleased to announce the sixth exhibition with Jorge Pardo and U.S. premiere of Pardo's DADS CUBA. This piece debuted in the Havana Biennial at the Centro de Arte Contemporáneo Wifredo Lam. It was both Pardo's first return to Cuba since his family left in 1968 and his first work made in Cuba.
Pardo created "DADS CUBA," during the run of the biennial with the help of a computer routing machine or a CNC machine. Visitors could watch as the paintings were made, hand painted and hung on the wall. The color palette references the primal landscapes and hybrid iconography of Cuban artist Wifredo Lam's paintings. The textured, star-shaped paintings fit together like puzzle pieces. For the final week of the exhibition, fabric lamps were hung from the ceiling, extending the piece into the volume of the room, linking the wall works to the architecture of the space.
"The work is very dependent on currency, on emotional currency. It's not trying to make something out of nothing."
Accompanying DADS CUBA, Pardo will include a series of new ceramic works. Since 1996, Pardo has worked with Ceramica Suro creating pots, tiles and lamps. Pardo seeks to bend, stretch, and break the boundaries between sculpture, installation, design, and décor thus upsetting art's traditional dichotomy of high and low. This can be seen in his monumental hacienda work, Tecoh (2012), or temporary installation at the Musée des Augustins in Toulouse in 2014.
Jorge Pardo was born in Havana, Cuba. He holds a BFA from the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena and lives and works between Mérida, México and New York. Pardo has exhibited widely in various international institutions since his first solo show in Pasadena in 1988. In addition to participating in numerous international group exhibitions, Pardo has realized many permanent projects, including Reading Room at the Boijmans Van Beuningen Museum in Rotterdam (1996), Pier in the Skulptur Projekte in Münster (1997), 4166 Sea View Lane with the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles (1998), Untitled (Café-Restaurant), K21, Düsseldorf (2002), Delegates Dining Room, German Parliament, Paul-Löbe-Haus, Berlin, (2003), Penelope, Liverpool (2004), Tecoh, Yucatán, México (2008), Reinstallation of Latin American Galleries, LACMA, Los Angeles (2008-present), and Streetcar Stop for The City of Portland, (2013).
He has had major solo exhibitions at institutions such as the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago (1997), the Museum Boijmans in Rotterdam (1997), The Dia Foundation in New York (2000-2003), The Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens in Deurle (2002), Fundació La Caixa in Barcelona (2004), Museum of Contemporary Art in North Miami, (2007), K21 in Düsseldorf (2009), Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin (2010), and The Bronx Museum of the Arts in The Bronx (2014).
