April 18–September 12, 2015
Opening: Friday, April 17, 6–8pm
Artist talk: Saturday, April 18, 2–3pm
Linda Pace Foundation Gallery
SPACE
111 Camp Street
San Antonio, TX 78204
www.lindapacefoundation.org
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Organized by Kathryn Kanjo
The Linda Pace Foundation presents It Takes a Village, a solo exhibition of work by New York-based artist Alejandro Diaz. The exhibition focuses on Diaz’s eclectic and satirical aesthetic, featuring a series of new works comprising sculptures, paintings, and a site-specific installation, as well as a hand-woven tapestry from 2014.
As an artist with a national voice, Diaz grew up in San Antonio, Texas, and much of his work is influenced by the contemporary Mexican/Texan cultures of his youth. It Takes a Village uses pop, modern, and folkloric works of art as its starting point, and evokes previous artists or art movements that combined high and low art, often using language and humor as a form of cultural and socio-economic critique.
Muebles (2015) is a series of cast-resin, life-size pieces of furniture that are in the shape of migrant workers, representing stereotypes of the Mexican identity. Diaz explains, “The Spanish word Muebles (furniture) comes from the Latin Mobilis which means something that is movable or easy to move. These sculptures co-opt Allen Jones’s high art furniture of the 1960s to draw attention not only to the plight of Mexican immigrants in the US, but to Mexican-American culture at large as a commodity—as a culture that when no longer needed or useful can be easily moved or removed like a piece of furniture.”
Linda Pace Foundation Trustee and Curator Kathryn Kanjo adds, “Diaz reflects the creative, cultural energy of San Antonio—the same energy that so inspired Linda Pace. He filters challenging, social subject matter through visual art tropes that seem to simultaneously critique and celebrate their subjects. With works that are declarative, bold, and playful, he is one of the core artists that helped define the San Antonio contemporary art community in the 1990s.”
About Alejandro Diaz
Based in New York City, Diaz is originally from Texas, where he developed a pertinent body of work exemplifying the complex and visually rich cultural milieu particular to South Texas and Mexico. Diaz received his MA at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, in 1999. His work was featured in Phantom Sightings, a Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) exhibition that traveled to Mexico City, San Antonio, New York, and Houston (2008–2010). He received a Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award for excellence in the visual arts in 2008, and had a solo exhibition at the RISD Museum at the Rhode Island School of Design (2012–2013). More Information here.
About the Linda Pace Foundation
Guided by the Founder’s conviction that contemporary art is essential to a dynamic society, the Linda Pace Foundation fosters the creation, presentation, and understanding of innovative expression through contemporary art. Grants support the work of contemporary artists, the International Artist Residency program of Artpace, and the public exhibition of Pace’s growing contemporary art collection through loans to museums and its public exhibitions at SPACE gallery. Free and open to the public, visitors enter SPACE through CHRISpark, experiencing the meandering beauty of another of Linda Pace’s creations, founded in loving memory of her son.
Media contact
Meg Blackburn, Fitz & Co.: meg [at] fitzandco.com / T +1 212 627 1455 x7390
