MONICA BENGOA: EXERCISES DE STYLE / EXERCISES IN STYLE Opens Today at Patricia and Phillip Frost Art Museum FIU

The Patricia and Phillip Frost Art Museum FIU presents the first-ever showing of a new series by Chilean artist Mónica Bengoa, Exercises de Style / Exercises in Style opening today, February 14 through April 26. The exhibition is organized by guest curator Julia Herzberg and includes 19 artworks based on French writer Raymond Queneau's book Exercises de Style, interpreted by the artist in three mediums - paper, felt and embroidery.

The public is invited to an opening reception Saturday, February 14, from 4-7 p.m. featuring welcome remarks by the artist and representatives of the Chilean government at Florida International University, 10975 S.W. 17 Street in Miami (link to map/directions). The opening reception and admission to the museum are free and open to the public.

Her work has been exhibited at the 52nd Venice Biennale, the IV International Biennial of Photography and Visual Art of Liège, Belgium, the MAVI Museum of Visual Arts, Santiago, L'Espace Culturel Louis Vuitton, Paris, MOCA Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles and MOCA Seoul. Her numerous awards include twice being awarded the Pollock-Krasner Grant in 2003 and in 2015, and the FONDART Grant from Chile's Ministry of Culture.

Bengoa uses the stories of Raymond Queneau about mundane daily activities and adapts them into visual artworks.

The artist is known for her process of transferring photographic images of pages of literature into large murals via meticulous, intricate manual means including embroidery.

Her work is labor-intensive, and for this new series involved photographing the crumpled pages of Queneau's book and digitally stretching them, meticulously hand-tracing each letter and cutting the stencils of these letters into hundreds of pieces of felt.

Each felt letter is affixed onto paper and embroidery, fully recreating the French writer's text. Nineteen of Queneau's ninety-nine stories are included in this series.

"As the art museum of a major university in the process of building its own narrative, it is appropriate for the Frost Art Museum to present the debut of this new series of work by Chilean artist Mónica Bengoa, which deals with the concept of subjectivity in story telling" said the museum's Director, Dr. Jordana Pomeroy.

"Paired with Xu Bing's exhibition Writing Between Heaven and Earth (opening Feb. 21), which also focuses on meaning and lack of meaning, with these two exhibitions the Frost Art Museum celebrates two visual and philosophical approaches to the written word," adds Pomeroy. Mónica Bengoa: Exercises de Style / Exercises in Style is made possible with the support of The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Chile, the Embassy of Chile, the Facultad de Artes, Pontifical Catholic University of Chile, and the Isabel Aninat Galeria de Arte.

"Bengoa presents an extraordinary visual dialogue," said guest curator Julia Herzberg. "Her innovative process is as inventive as the linguistic modes in the pages of Queneau's book. Bengoa creates a vision where writing becomes image-making."