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About the Exhibition
Opening Reception
Friday, July 12, 5:30 - 7:30 pm
Artist Lecture
Friday, July 12, 6 pm
The Fabric Workshop and Museum (FWM) is pleased
to present a new installation by Charles Juhász-Alvarado,
Jardín de Frutos Prohibidos/ZONA FRANCA, which represented
Puerto Rico in the 2002 Sao Paulo Biennial. Educational programming
in collaboration with Taller Puertoriqueño is scheduled
for this exhibition.
With a massive floor and fringed pillows enveloped with images
of flora and fauna native to Puerto Rico, Charles Juhász-Alvarado's
installation, Jardín de Frutos Prohibidos/ZONA FRANCA
plows an exuberant garden proposal into the San Juan airport's
green area, telling a story of customs. Charles Juhász-Alvarado's
sculptural projects have always included
the challenge of direct public participation. In this installation,
the public enters the gallery to find themselves within what feels
like an airport lounge. On the walls are a series of photo-narrative
billboards flashing textual anecdotes of passengers arguing/negotiating
with agriculture customs officers concerning their travel with
forbidden fruit.
Jardín de Frutos Prohibidos/ZONA FRANCA bears fruit
that includes tropical delicacies such as mangoes, tamarind, root
vegetables and pigeon peas. On closer inspection, further delicacies
sprout: the fauna of the Caribbean island (and perhaps one's imagination)
is entangled with the flora of the proposed airport garden. Thousands
of figures, humans, animals, insects, fruit and references to
art history, are camouflaged in a refreshing green shade. The
growing orgy, allegedly the result of planting the confiscated
fruit, raises questions as to which customs these officers watch
over, and conversely, what reasons anyone would have not to postpone
their departure from this rich port long enough to consume and
seed its voluptuous garden or flirt with its controls. A Duty
Free shop carrying souvenir items of the installation completes
the project. During the presentation of the project at the 2002
Sao Paulo Biennial, Juhász-Alvarado and his staff added
to this f(r)iction, greeting the public dressed up as customs
officials, shopkeepers and flight attendants.
Past work by Juhász-Alvarado have also included narrative
and performative elements. Aquí se construye el Museo
de Arte de Puerto Rico; el comején nos hará mierda
(1998) was originally presented at the actual site of a major
new art museum under construction in San Juan. Instead of exhibition
announcement cards, Juhász-Alvarado posted flyers of photographs
along with a fictional newspaper story depicting the museum's
work crew shamelessly drinking rum, hanging out with prostitutes,
playing with construction materials, and defecating "sculpturally"
in the future museum's galleries. The narrative text told the
story of an outraged artist who was part of this work crew but
was determined to finish the building and inaugurate it with a
show of his own artwork. The meanings behind these scandalous
gestures grew in tension as the public visited the offended site
and encountered an installation credited to the insolent work
crew: a "magnificent maximalist construction," as critic
David Levi-Strauss described it.
Charles Juhász-Alvarado was born at Clark AFB in the Philippines
in 1965 and grew up in Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic.
He received his BA from Yale University in 1988 and his MFA in
Sculpture from the Yale School of Art, Yale University in 1994.
A resident of San Juan, Puerto Rico, Juhász-Alvarado's
group exhibitions include: Canal de la Mona: Zona de Turbulencia,
Here and There/Aqui y Allá, El Museo Del Barrio (New
York, NY, 2001); the 2002 Sao Paulo Biennial (Sao Paulo, Brazil,
2002); and Poliiacuteticas de la Diferencia, a traveling
exhibition with venues in Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela, Mexico,
the US, and Spain. Solo shows include: F, held at the Clough-Hanson
Gallery at Rhodes College (Memphis, Tennessee, 2002); Tu-Tran,
held at Espai 13 of the Fundación Miró (Barcelona,
Spain1999); Canal de la Mona: Zona de Turbulencia at Interarte
(Valencia, Spain,1999); and Punto de Fuga, at the Museo
de Arte de Ponce (Ponce, Puerto Rico, 1998).
The exhibition program of The Fabric Workshop and Museum is supported
by The Pew Charitable Trusts, the Pennsylvania Council on the
Arts, National Endowment for the Arts, LLWW Foundation, The Philadelphia
Cultural Fund, Independence Foundation, The Claneil Foundation,
Philip Morris Companies, the Miller-Plummer Foundation, The Barra
Foundation, and the Board of Directors and members of the Fabric
Workshop and Museum.
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