New York, NY, January 26, 2000--El Museo del Barrio announces the February opening of Mexique an installation by Franco Mondini-RuÌzí, on view from February 10 through May 21, 2000. Commissioned by El Museo, this site specific installation is Franco Mondini-RuÌzí first solo presentation in New York, and will be featured as part of the Contemporanea series.

Mexique, French for Mexico, is a mixed media installation, which recreates in miniature the Aztec capital of Tenochtitl·n, now Mexico City. The work displays miniature floating gardens, canals, temples, palaces and marketplaces populated by hundreds of paper cutout figures in eighteenth-century European dress. The artist contrasts the old and new worlds through inventive imagery, including Aztec deities, urban splendor, rituals of sacrifice and worship.

Julia P. Herzberg, Ph.D., consulting curator of the exhibit, comments: ìThe artistsí perfumed, powdered, and confectionery delights, romanticize --yet satirize--tumultuous, unresolved conflicts between old and new worlds in Mexico as well as in the Mondini-RuÌzí native Southwest.î According to Herzberg, the artist also invokes Hern·n Cortesí astonishment when he and his conquistadors encountered the wealth and size of an urban civilization that was superior in many ways to anything they had encountered in Europe.

The objects in the installation - from San Antonio, East Harlemís El Barrio, Chinatown and Brooklyn - represent the old and the new worlds, high art and everyday objects, and historical and ahistorical contexts.

Born in San Antonio, Texas, and currently living in New York City, Mondini-RuÌz is a self taught artist who was trained as a lawyer. He began producing art about ten years ago by creating small, ephemeral sculptural objects inspired by neoclassical and pre-Columbian styles. He has since shown in the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College (Annandale-on-Hudson, NY); the San Antonio Museum of Art and the Blue Star Art Space (San Antonio, TX); the Austin Museum of Art (Austin, TX); and in March will participate in the Whitney Museum of American Artís 2000 Biennial.

The Contempor·nea Series, now in its fourth year, continues to commission groundbreaking site-specific installations by emerging or under recognized artists whose work extends the boundaries of art making.

This exhibition is generously funded by the Greenwall Foundation and Jerome Foundation.

The mission of El Museo del Barrio is to establish a forum that will preserve and project the cultural heritage of Puerto Ricans and all Latin Americans in the United States.

Museum hours: Wed. through Sun. 11 to 5 p.m. Suggested contribution: $4 adults; $2 students and seniors; children under twelve accompanied by adults and members enter free.

El Museo del Barrio may be reached by subway: #6 to 103rd Street station; or by bus: M1, M3, M4 on Madison and Fifth Avenues to 104th Street; local cross-town service between Yorkville or East Harlem and the Upper West Side in Manhattan M96 and M106 or M2.