Pablo Helguera:
The Fable Is To Be Retold
September 17–November 19, 2016
DiverseWorks
3400 Main Street
Houston, TX 77002
Hours: Wednesday–Thursday noon–6pm,
Friday–Saturday noon–8pm
New York-based, Mexican artist Pablo Helguera presents artworks inspired by childhood for his first solo exhibition in Houston. Through stories, fables, educational and museum environments, and other playful scenarios, the artist invites us to reflect upon childhood as a metaphor, in ways that range from poetic (as a reverie about lost innocence) to political (as the way we experience power relationships).
His exhibition at DiverseWorks includes collage, video, sound, and installation work, including a mini-museum of school life and an interactive optical illusion room. The centerpiece of the exhibition, Pedro and the Wolf Captain, is a trapezoidal room based on an invention by American ophthalmologist Adelbert Ames, Jr. in 1934. The room creates an optical illusion that is activated by two or more participants and visible through a camera lens or peephole. An accompanying video documents a short play performed by Helguera and Houston actor and director, Tim Fried-Fiori. Helguera’s script is a hybrid of a play by Uruguayan writer Mario Benedetti, Pedro y el capitán, about the power relationships between a military official and a captured student activist during the Argentinian military dictatorship in 1976, and Peter and the Wolf, composed by Sergei Prokofiev in 1936. Gallery visitors to the exhibition are provided with Helguera’s script and are invited to perform their own version of the play in the Ames room.
Through this and other conceptual artworks, Helguera invites visitors to consider the dynamics at play between those in a position to teach (adults, parents, teachers, curators, etc.) and those looking to others for learning and access (children, students, museum visitors, etc.). The exhibition at DiverseWorks continues Helguera’s unique investigations into the social structures and ideologies at play in both classrooms and museums.
About the artist
Pablo Helguera(b. 1971, Mexico City) combines performance, visual art, community outreach, and political activism to examine the social and cultural function of teaching and memory systems. He has exhibited and performed internationally in many museums and biennials (most recently at the 2016 Manifesta and Site Santa Fe biennials) and is currently the Director of Adult and Academic Programs in the Education Department at the Museum of Modern Art, New York.
About DiverseWorks
DiverseWorks is a non-profit multidisciplinary art center in Houston, Texas. The mission of DiverseWorks is to commission, produce, and present new and daring art in all its forms through innovative collaborations that honor each artist’s vision without constraint.
This exhibition is supported by the National Endowment for the Arts, the Texas Commission on the Arts, the City of Houston through the Houston Arts Alliance, The Brown Foundation, Inc., the Houston Endowment, the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, and the Wortham Foundation. Special thanks to the DiverseWorks Board of Directors and Artist Advisory Board, the African American Library at the Gregory School, Dance Source Houston, the Houston Metropolitan Research Center, the Houston Young Artists’ Concert, MATCH, Mercury, Bruce Robinson Design, and White Rabbit Design Studio.
