The Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami Will Present the Works of Raul de Nieves

The Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami (MOCA) will present the most comprehensive survey to date of work by artist Raúl de Nieves, "Raúl de Nieves: Eternal Return and The Obsidian Heart." The exhibition reconnects artist Raúl de Nieves' exuberant material sensibility to his roots in punk music and performance, devotional ritual, and celebratory queerness. It is curated by independent curator Risa Puleo.

Opening on Tuesday, April 21, "Raúl de Nieves: Eternal Return and The Obsidian Heart" will be on view through Sunday, July 12, 2020. An artist reception will be held on Wednesday, April 22, 7-9 p.m. General admission to MOCA is $10; it's free for MOCA members and North Miami residents.

Multimedia artist, performer and musician de Nieves was born in Michoacan, Mexico in 1983, and now resides in Brooklyn, New York. He is inspired by his childhood in Michoacan, where public religious rituals and private devotional acts included elaborate costuming, performances, and theatrical components. De Nieves' visual symbolism draws on both classical Catholic and Mexican vernacular motifs. He is also inspired by queer punk scenes in San Diego, San Francisco, and New York, where he found his artistic voice. His wide-ranging practice investigates notions of beauty and transformation, plumbing the relationship between decadence, desire, and divinity across material, emotional, and spiritual realms. Whether working in collaboration with other artists and musicians, or as a solo practitioner making labor-intensive paintings, sculptures, drawings, installations, and environments, de Nieves articulates an aesthetic of abundance through an economy of means. Elaborate anthropomorphic figures shimmer and seduce from afar, but a closer look reveals that they are encrusted in beads, crystals, plastic jewels, sequins, cardboard, and other readily-available items that the artist transforms through a laborious, ritual-like practice.

As its title suggests, Eternal Return and The Obsidian Heart takes the artist's investigation of different concepts of time and spiritual and emotional growth as its subject. Such concerns manifest in works such as When I Look into Your Eyes I See the Sun, 2018, the working, life-size carousel which will occupy MOCA's exhibition space. Circling endlessly in a performance of fantasy and delirium, the carousel suggests the cosmic time of the eternal return and the planetary time of the Earth's orbit around the sun.

For de Nieves, art-making is a process of creating a mirror for one's self; it is a tool of awareness and a means of externalizing an interior state which offers the possibility of transmuting emotional energy into physical energy and moving it from the body into material containers in the world. This ritual-like process is the means by which de Nieves imbues his opulent, anthropomorphic creatures with spiritual essence and power. This power is felt throughout the exhibition and embodied in works such as de Nieves' signature stained glass installations and performances in which the artist channels alternate dimensions.

"MOCA North Miami is extremely excited to have Raúl de Nieves' work at the Museum, where we seek a fresh approach in examining the art of our time," said MOCA Executive Director Chana Budgazad Sheldon. "De Nieves is one of the most exciting artists working in the U.S. today, his young career has been prolific."

"'Eternal Return and The Obsidian Heart' offers a holistic look at the ways in which Raúl de Nieves rejoins the spiritual with the material in contemporary consumer culture," said Puleo. "The exhibition is the first to consider the relationship between de Nieves' sculptural work and his solo and collaborative performances, and in doing so, it also offers a holistic view of the artist's practice."

Raul de Nieves's recent solo exhibitions include those at the Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland; Company, New York; SCAD Museum of Art, Savannah; Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston and Apalazzo, Brescia and Freedman Fitzpatrick, Los Angeles. Additional group shows include those at K11 Art Foundation, Hong Kong; Swiss Institute, New York; New Orleans Museum of Art, New Orleans; The Museum of Art and Design, New York; the Zabludowicz Collection, London as well the 2017 Whitney Biennial and MoMA PS1's 2015 Greater New York.

Risa Puleo is an independent curator. Her exhibition "Monarchs: Brown and Native Contemporary Artists in the Path of the Butterfly" was curated for Bemis Center for Contemporary Art during her year as curator-in-residence. The exhibition traveled to the Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami; Blue Star Contemporary and Southwest School of Art in San Antonio; and The Nerman Art Museum in Overland Park, Kansas. Puleo's exhibition "Walls Turned Sideways: Artists Confront the Justice System" opened at the Contemporary Arts Museum in Houston in 2018 and traveled to Tufts University Art Gallery in 2020. Other exhibitions have been hosted by the Leslie Lohman Museum in New York City; Franklin Street Works in Stamford, CT; Charlotte Street Foundation in Kansas City, and more. She has written for Art in America, Art Papers, Art 21, Asia Art Pacific, Hyperallergic.com, Modern Painters and other art publications.

Admission to the museum is $10 and free to MOCA members and North Miami residents. For more information, visit mocanomi.org, call 305-893-6211 or email info@mocanomi.org.

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