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NEWS RELEASE |
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LAST CHANCE: re-imagining orozco
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| Homage to Orozco #1, Enrique Chagoyas, 2010 |
The Anna-Maria and Stephen Kellen Gallery
Sheila C. Johnson Design Center
Parsons The New School for Design
66 Fifth Avenue at 13th Street
Through September 12, 2010
Chagoya Lecture: September 8, 2010
NEW YORK, August 31, 2010— The New School Art Collection has announced the gift of a large-scale drawing by contemporary Mexican-American artist Enrique Chagoya, which is one of a series commissioned by The New School for the exhibition Re-Imagining Orozco. On view through September 12 at the Sheila C. Johnson Design Center at Parsons The New School for Design, the exhibition explores the legacy of influential Mexican artist José Clemente Orozco’s historic 1931 New School mural cycle A Call to Revolution and Table of Universal Brotherhood through new commissions by Chagoya as well as university-wide collaborations with students and faculty.
One of the most important works in the New School Art Collection, the murals are one of the few remaining examples of Orozco’s work outside of Mexico and the only public commission by a Mexican muralist left in New York City. Chagoya's f large-scale drawings, which he completed on site in the galleries, respond to the mural series and serve as a catalyst for contemporary discussion.
“Chagoya’s work, which combines printmaking, collage and caricature, is rife with humor and presents a searing commentary on everything from racial policy to political aesthetics that cut to the core of this country’s limitations and excesses,” said New School Art Collection curators Silvia Rocciolo and Eric Stark. “And Chagoya’s affinity with Orozco is well known, making his participation in this project pivotal.”
In Homage to Orozco #1, Chagoya re-imagines Orozco’s Table of Universal Brotherhood. He depicts Stephen Hawking, Dolores Huerta and Andy Warhol sitting at the table as representatives for the allegory of “Science, Labor and Art,” and George Washington, Queen Elizabeth and Mao Tse-Tung as symbols for socio-political ideologies. The figures, bearing Chagoya’s signature “googly eyes,” gaze at the viewer while a gigantic male nude crashes down on the table headfirst. An over-scale skull, hovering at the left of the composition, faces the absurdist scene. With the help of two Parsons students, Chagoya extended the drawing onto the wall of the gallery by adding caricatures appropriated from Orozco’s sketchbooks interspersed with etchings he selected from final projects by Parsons illustration students.
"Chagoya’s re-imagining of Orozco’s Table, with his infusion of wit and biting social commentary, brings Orozco squarely into the present and engages the viewer to consider and explore the Mexican muralist’s vision from a 21st century perspective," said Rocciolo and Stark.
Born in Mexico in 1953, Chagoya is currently an Associate Professor of Art at Stanford University, where he received the Dean's Award in the Humanities in 1998. His work is in the collections of The LA County Museum of Art, The National Museum of American Art, The Whitney Museum of American Art, the Museum of Modern Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the New York Public Library among others.
Chagoya will return to the New School campus on September 8 to present a lecture in timing with the final week of the exhibition. For more information, including gallery hours, please visit www.newschool.edu/parsons/sjdc.
About the Sheila C. Johnson Design Center
The Sheila C. Johnson Design Center is an award-winning campus center for Parsons The New School for Design that combines learning and public spaces with exhibition galleries to provide an important new downtown destination for art and design programming. The mission of the Center is to generate an active dialogue on the role of innovative art and design in responding to the contemporary world. Its programming encourages an interdisciplinary examination of possibility and process, linking the university to local and global debates. The center is named in honor of its primary benefactor, New School Trustee and Parsons Board Chair Sheila C. Johnson. The design by Lyn Rice Architects is the recipient of numerous awards, including an Honor Award from the American Institute of Architects. For more information, please visit www.newschool.edu/parsons/sjdc.
About Parsons The New School for Design
Parsons The New School for Design is one of the most prestigious and comprehensive institutions of art and design in the world. Located in New York City, Parsons prepares students to creatively and critically address the complex conditions of contemporary global society. Combining rigorous craft with cutting-edge theory and research methods, Parsons encourages collaborative and individual approaches that cut across a wide array of disciplines. For more information, please visit www.newschool.edu/parsons.
About The New School Art Collection
The New School Art Collection embodies the legacy of The New School’s historic involvement with the avant-garde in the arts. The collection numbers approximately 1,800 works in various media by emerging and established contemporary artists with an emphasis on works that endeavor to explore the aesthetic and cultural concerns of our times. For more information, please visit www.newschool.edu/artcollection.
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