NYC Artist Alexandre Arrechea to Appear in Pittsburgh 8/25-26 to Discuss His Public Art in NO LIMITS

The Pittsburgh Cultural Trust announces Cuban-born artist and sculptor Alexandre Arrechea will be in Pittsburgh August 25 & 26, 2014, discussing his public artwork on view throughout downtown Pittsburgh through September 5, 2014. Three monumental sculptures that are part of Arrechea's series No Limits were installed during the Dollar Bank Three Rivers Arts Festival in Gateway Center and at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center, with generous support from The Fine Foundation. The events are hosted in partnership with the Pittsburgh Office of Public Art. Reservations can be made online at publicartpittsburgh.org or by calling 412-391-2060, ext. 237.

A free artist talk and documentary screening of No Limits will be held in the Peirce Studio, Trust Arts Education Center, 805/807 Liberty Avenue, Monday, August 25, at 6 p.m. The evening features Arrechea -- winner of the Fund for Park Avenue Award in 2013 -- discussing his sculptural work No Limits. There will also be a screening of the artist's documentary No Limits (USA, 2013/26 min.), which examines the relationship between architecture and power, covering the entire process of fabrication and installation of these monumental sculptures. No Limits was directed and written by Juan Carlos Alom, Armando Suárez Cobián, and Ismael de Diego.

On Tuesday, August 26, at noon, Arrechea will lead a free public art walking tour of his works. Participants should meet at Penn Avenue and 10th Street, in front of the Seagram sculpture, near the David L. Lawrence Convention Center. The walking tour will visit each of the artist's three installations in addition to public artworks along the walking route, including Tony Tasset's Magnolias for Pittsburgh and Romare Bearden's Pittsburgh Recollections. The tour will last approximately one hour.

Arrechea's No Limits is series of ten large-scale sculptures representing iconic New York City buildings that plays on the idea of elastic architecture as a metaphor for the challenges and opportunities of shifting conditions and new realities. Through his art, Arrechea entices the viewer to explore his or her own role in such concepts as control, power, and surveillance.

The buildings portrayed in No Limits are twisted, turned, and rotated, and are fused to spinning tops, or tompos (toy tops popular in Latin America), resulting in the idea of a building in perpetual motion-a building that can continuously spin, fall, or rise again.

"With this installation, I have created a set of works that confront dynamism vs. static, the whole vs. the fragmented, control vs. chaos, utopia vs. reality," says artist Alexandre Arrechea. "The series provides a new point of access from which to understand the dialog between art and architecture and how this relationship can evolve and open new doors."

Sculpture Locations: Metropolitan Life Insurance, Four Gateway Center, near Liberty Ave. & Stanwix St.; Courthouse, Four Gateway Center, in upper level plaza; Seagram, David L. Lawrence Convention Center, near Penn Ave. & 10th St.

Alexandre Arrechea (born Trinidad, Cuba, 1970) graduated from Instituto Superior de Arte (ISA) in Havana, Cuba, in 1994. He was a founding member of the collective Los Carpinteros (1991-2003). As a solo artist, Arrechea represented his homeland in the first ever Cuban Pavilion at the Venice Biennale (2011), as well as the 11th Havana Biennial (2012). Arrechea was the spring 2011 BAMbill cover artist as well as featured in "Hola Havana" for the Brooklyn Academy of Music as part of ¡Si Cuba! Festival (2011). A key source for this work is the prominence of surveillance systems and the accompanying obsession with control during our time. Works such as the Garden of Mistrust (2003-2005) and Perpetual Free Entrance (2006) deal with troubles of accessibility or approach to artwork. An installation he created for the 2009 Havana Biennial consisted of a steel house divided into eleven sections, the separation between walls changing daily, depending of the rise or fall of the Dow Jones Industrial Average. In March 2010, Arrechea was chosen to create a public art program in New York City's Times Square. The video work Black Sun (2009) was a 3-D animated wrecking ball that continuously hit the NASDAQ Billboard. Arrechea's work is ultimately a provocative exercise of criticisms to the known structures of power in our time.

About the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust - The Pittsburgh Cultural Trust has overseen one of Pittsburgh's most historic transformations: turning a seedy red-light district into a magnet destination for arts lovers, residents, visitors, and business owners. Founded in 1984, the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust is a non-profit arts organization whose mission is the cultural and economic revitalization of a 14-block arts and entertainment/residential neighborhood called the Cultural District. The District is one of the country's largest land masses "curated" by a single nonprofit arts organization. A major catalytic force in the city, the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust is a unique model of how public-private partnerships can reinvent a city with authenticity, innovation and creativity. Using the arts as an economic catalyst, the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust has holistically created a world-renowned Cultural District that is revitalizing the city, improving the regional economy and enhancing Pittsburgh's quality of life. Thanks to the support of foundations, corporations, government agencies and thousands of private citizens, the Cultural Trust stands as a national model of urban redevelopment through the arts. For more information, visit TrustArts.org.

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