Hudson (Show)Room Exhibition: Luis Gispert

Luis Gispert
07.29.04

About the Artist
Through richly hued photos and videos, Luis Gispert investigates the relationship between tradition and contemporary culture. Drawing on his urban upbringing and Cuban heritage, Gispert creates unlikely scenarios that collide such seemingly disparate worlds.

Luis Gispert was born in Jersey City, NJ in 1972. He has a BFA in film from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, IL (1996) and an MFA in sculpture from Yale University, New Haven, CT (2001). He has had solo exhibitions at the Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH (2004); Whitney Museum of American Art at Altria, New York, NY (2004); and Miami Art Central, FL (2004). Group exhibitions include the 2002 Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art; New Museum of Contemporary Art (2002); and Bronx Museum of the Arts, New York, NY (2002). The artist currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.

About the Exhibition
Luis Gispert's exhibition features works from two recent series. It includes eleven large-scale photos: three from Cheerleaders (2001) and eight from the artist's newest project, Urban Myths Part I (2003), as well as two looped videos. The works reveal an increasingly explicit interest in the hybrid space of adaptation and assimilation.

In the photographic series Cheerleaders (2001), ghetto-fabulous cheerleaders—adorned with delicate tattoos, airbrushed nails, and platinum jewelry—are arranged into fantastical poses that fuse past and present by connecting the history of painting with the baroque nature of hip-hop icons.

In Goddess, a lip-sticked girl beatifically levitates against the anonymous void of a chromakey green background. Her eyes are serenely closed, yet her face is burdened by oversized hip-hop earrings. The girl gestures to the heavens like a figure from a religious painting—but also like an urban teen throwing gang signs. Gispert's goddess sports a gold-plated gun charm where her painted counterpart would have worn a crucifix. In this work, as in the others, old school and new school co-mingle to create something in-between.

In Urban Myths Part I, the solitary figures and green screens of Cheerleaders give way to evocative domestic situations rife with cross- generational possibility. On these sets, visual signifiers (guayaberas, cigars, symbols of the divine) foreground tradition, shifting an opposing balance established in the previous series.

In Dinner Girls, cheerleaders reappear but are subsumed by their surroundings. Three engage in an old-world style séance around a dining room table while gold chains and encrusted medallions float around their necks. Here history holds its own. The girls' jewelry appears as a contemporary corollary to the ornate mirrors and gilded clocks that fill the parents' home, and their raised hands seem less gangster and more ode to ancestry

For Turntables two dapper Cubanos in an American-style living room stare up at retrofitted boom boxes floating supernaturally above their heads. With celestial doves appearing in paintings and statues around the room, the image remixes future with the past.

Gispert's work indicates that the present is a hybrid of the past and suggests a model of cultural adaptation over assimilation. As two populations intermix, a third, entirely different entity is created. The old is not merely abandoned for the new—traditions, customs, and signifiers synthesize to form a fusion of behaviors and aesthetics.

Exhibition Dates
July 29 – October 17, 2004

Opening Reception
Thursday, September 16, 6:30-8:00 PM
Gallery walk-thru with the artist at 7:00 PM

Brown Bag Lunch
Wednesday, September 8, 12:00-1:00 PM
Join Education and Curatorial Associate Kate Green for a tour of Luis Gispert and a brown bag lunch provided by Sip ($6.50). Please call Artpace for menu and reservations.

Event Locations
All events are free and held at Artpace, 445 N. Main Avenue. Free parking at N. Flores and Savings streets. Artpace is open to the public Wednesday thru Sunday, 12-5 PM, Thursday 12-8 PM, and by appointment. There is no charge for admission.

About Artpace
Artpace San Antonio serves as an advocate for contemporary art and as a catalyst for the creation of significant art projects. We seek to nurture emerging and established artists and to provide opportunities for inspiration, experimentation, and education. Our programs support the evolution of new ideas in contemporary art and cultivate diverse audiences while providing a forum for ongoing dialogue.

445 North Main Avenue San Antonio TX 78205 t 210 212 4900 f 210 212 4990 www.artpace.org