Hunter College East Harlem Gallery Presents JORGE PINEDA: SHADOWS AND OTHER FAIRY TALES, 9/28-12/28

The Hunter College East Harlem Art Gallery will present Jorge Pineda: Shadows and Other Fairy Tales from September 28 through December 28, 2012. The gallery is located in Hunter College's Lois V. and Samuel Silberman School of Social Work building at 2180 Third Avenue at 119th Street, Manhattan.

The first US solo exhibition of Dominican artist Jorge Pineda, Shadows and Other Fairy Tales, features two major art installations. The exhibition presents one of Pineda's most representative works to date, The Forest: Lies (Version III, 2006), a psychologically charged artwork characteristic of Pineda's blend of drawing and installation. Pineda has also conceived a new installation for this exhibition: Oh Taschen, Taschen, Taschen! Wild Girls Without a Mask (2012) composed of double portraits of ninety-three international women artists that uses Taschen's publication Women Artists of the 20th and 21st Century as a point of departure. The work is an inventory-like accumulation of portraits that juxtaposes drawings depicting the faces of each artist, and acrylic paintings of Lucha Libre masks that conform to the artists' features. The exhibition illustrates how the artist explores the psychological shaping of individuals and society, the interaction of the conscious and unconscious, and the interplay of visibility and concealment involved in this process.

Pineda belongs to the generation of Dominican installation artists who, toward the end of the 1980s and in the early '90s, transformed the artistic scene in Santo Domingo by broadening the range of themes and mediums of expression in Dominican art. He experiments with a variety of media, but it is his signature combination of drawing and installation that has gained him recognition in Spain and throughout the Americas. The Forest: Lies (Version III) is composed of dense, uncontrolled lines drawn vigorously directly on the wall, a mass that expands until it reaches the confines of the gallery space, ultimately revealing its root: A life-size sculpture of a child wearing a red hood, her face hidden against the wall.

Pineda started incorporating masks in his artworks toward the end of the 1990s; when he depicts his subjects he often obscures their faces. Oh Taschen, Taschen, Taschen! Wild Girls Without a Mask marks a new direction for the artist, removing the masks and presenting viewers with seemingly straightforward portraits, demonstrating that the traditional portrait is as illusory as the masked versions, rather than revealing the subject's "real" identity.

Jorge Pineda was born in the coastal town of Barahona, located in the eponymous province at the southwest edge of the Dominican Republic. A self-taught draftsman, Pineda studied architecture at the Universidad Autónoma de Santo Domingo from 1978 to 1981, and lithography in the Bordas Studio in Paris in 1989. He has had solo shows in Gijón, Lima, Lyon, Madrid, and Santo Domingo, and has taken part in numerous national and international group exhibitions. Pineda currently lives and works in Santo Domingo and Madrid.

Jorge Pineda: Shadows and Other Fairy Tales was curated by Mariluz Hoyos, Associate Curator, Hunter College East Harlem Art Gallery. This exhibition and its public programs are funded in part by the Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros.

The Hunter College East Harlem Art Gallery opened its doors in September of 2011 at the Silberman School of Social Work Building. The gallery is a space for initiating partnerships between different departments and academic disciplines. It presents exhibitions and public events that aim to foster academic collaboration at Hunter College while addressing subjects relevant to the East Harlem community, including those related to Latin America and the Caribbean. For more information, visit http://www.hunter.cuny.edu/eastharlem-artgallery.

More Articles by This Author...