Contact: Lauren Van Natten
T. 212 660 7102
lvannatten@elmuseo.org
For Immediate Release

FELIX GONZALEZ-TORRES: EARLY IMPRESSIONS

On View at El Museo del Barrio
February 24 – May 21, 2006
Press Preview: Thursday, February 23
11:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m.
New York, NY – February 2006

New York, NY – February 2006 –- El Museo del Barrio New York’s premier Latino and Latin American cultural institution, will present Felix Gonzalez-Torres: Early Impressions from February 24 – May 21, 2006, in collaboration with El Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña and the Trienal Poli/Gráfica de San Juan: América Latina y el Caribe . Organized by Deborah Cullen , Director of Curatorial Programs at El Museo, the exhibition expands upon an original presentation curated by Elvis Fuentes as part of the Trienal (December 2004-March 2005). While the renowned conceptual work of Cuban-born Felix Gonzalez-Torres (1957-1996) continues to be internationally embraced, the creative output from his early period in Puerto Rico has yet to be fully explored. Never before seen outside of Puerto Rico , this exhibition will highlight Gonzalez-Torres’ very early efforts from his formative years, relating them to selections from his mature and well-known artistic oeuvre.

Felix Gonzalez-Torres: Early Impressions will present documents, working papers, and materials from the artist’s period of study and artistic production and activity in Puerto Rico (1978-1985). This material includes poems, photographs, texts and conceptual projects published in newspapers and magazines; stills documenting performances; experimental videos; sketches and proposals for projects never realized; and ephemera such as press releases and invitations. Twelve mature works, borrowed from public and private collections, will be placed in the context of these preliminary projects to reveal the trajectory of Gonzalez-Torres’ conceptual, personal and political concerns as well as the development of his innovative use of popular, mass-reproducible mediums. Included in this exhibition are news clipping works, photograph-imprinted puzzles, and three of the artist’s well-known paper “stack” pieces that shift traditional ideas of ownership, value and meaning by inviting the viewer to individualize the experience of the work by taking a sheet. These stacks simultaneously play upon the idea of the printed poster, an important form in Puerto Rican and Cuban art.

The exhibition’s curator, Elvis Fuentes , has commented on the continuity and progression of specific themes in Gonzalez-Torres’ work: “Experimentation in photography and printmaking, a strong relationship to the media­­—particularly the press—the importance of text as image, in dialogue with the poster tradition, the themes of beach and memory, the experience of migration and the family—these are some of the strands that link the work of Felix Gonzalez-Torres (registered in his catalogue raisonnée) with his formative stage in Puerto Rico. The documents reunited by this project . . . demonstrate the necessity to study more profoundly this relationship.”

In relation to the influence of the graphic tradition in Puerto Rico upon the contemporary artist as well as to the development of artistic production outside of mainstream methods, Felix Gonzalez-Torres: Early Impressions will be presented concurrently with Between the Lines: Text as Image. An Homage to Lorenzo Homar and The Reverend Pedro Pietri, an original exhibition featuring select works by the two major, recently deceased Puerto Rican masters who highlighted poetry, language, and texts in their works. El Museo’s presentation will link the two artists – Homar as a leading Caribbean printmaker and Pietri as influential performance artist and co-founder of the Nuyorican literary movement – and their circles for the first time, and will correspond with the use of text and reproducible forms as explored in Gonzalez-Torres’ earlier work. A full range of public programs for adults and children will accompany both exhibitions.

Support for Felix Gonzalez-Torres: Early Impressions has been generously provided by Agnes Gund and Daniel Shapiro. Additional support has been provided by Art Nexus, Diageo North America and by the Hispanic Federation. The media sponsor for this exhibition is Univision 41/Telefutura 68.