MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART, North Miami
770 NE 125th Street
North Miami, FL 33161
Jorge Pardo, Untitled (Cesar and Mima Reyes House), 2006, Medium and Dimensions Variable. Photo: Nikolas Koenig
The Museum of Contemporary Art presents the first comprehensive U.S. museum exhibition of Jorge Pardo. As Pardo's work generally assumes the form of recognizable objects such as furniture, stretched paintings, or habitable structures, he is often considered one of the leading artists to cross the boundaries of art, design, and architecture. Although many of these objects are fully functional as furniture or architecture, their function actually is more complex. Pardo investigates what constitutes an aesthetic experience. In particular, he speculates on what separates an art experience from an everyday experience, especially when the environment that he has created looks very similar to objects and spaces viewers encounter in their daily life.
As context plays an essential role in the presentation of his work, Pardo was invited to create a new context that would provide the conceptual framework for this exhibition. Jorge Pardo: House adopts the premise of a "home", which is at once familiar and in the museum context, disarming. By transforming the museum into a house and treating its galleries as rooms, Pardo's works could be reassembled according to their apparent use in the appropriate location. Pardo also designed the exhibition's floor plan, which provides no defined path through the exhibition and in certain areas opens up the vista into several spaces at once. The exhibition also extends beyond the museum itself to encompass site-specific projects around the world. These projects are presented as large-scale photomurals, which create a disorienting space for viewers and run through the gallery like a filmstrip.
