Entre Horizontes : Art and Activism between Puerto Rico and Chicago

A review of  Entre Horizontes: Art and Activism Between Chicago and Puerto Rico 

at The Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago

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 Arnaldo Roche Rabell (1955-2018) Aqui y alla  (Here and There),1989 

There is no indication online that Rabell identified as gay - but four beefy guys cavorting on a boat at night off the coast of Chicago’s north side seems like that kind of theme.  They’re naked and certainly burning with something - probably desire. Rabell’s technique is incomprehensible to me.  He somehow wrapped a paint loaded canvas around  unclothed models. Nevertheless,  the results are quite powerful.  Obviously he made just the right alterations. And probably he was some kind of magician.

Armaldo Roche Rabell ,  Isla Vacia, (vacant island), 1987

More magic from Rabell - a memento mori still-life combined with an aerial cityscape of what must be San Juan -  and the all-too empty chairs.  He's quite passionate about the loss.

Angel Otero (b. 1981), Exquisito, 2009 

This is the kind of work Otero was doing right after he got his MFA at SAIC and was shown at the Chicago Cultural Center.  It recalls the home of his grandmother.  Like Rabell, it drips with sensuality, and it’s a kind of collage.  Otero uses scraped off paint skins.  A cool, distant, objective view of these things (all things?) is not possible. It’s all about emotion.

Candida Alvarez (b. 1955), Licking  a Red Rose, 2020

This piece is from the MCA’s own collection - and I can see why they acquired it.  It’s gorgeous. Signage tells us that it refers to the 2020 election as well as a friend licking a rose. But I think it’s just about Candida's joy of being alive.

Jose Lerma (b. 1971). Dorothy, 2023

As this photo shows, this is quite a large piece.

The artist used a special broom to brush thick acrylic paint across burlap.

It depicts Dorothy Dene, purportedly a model for Luis A. Ferre’s great gift to the museum in Ponce, Puerto Rico, ‘Flaming June’

Lord Leighton, Flaming June, 1895

Lerma has hinted at some ideological content behind his current work - as there was in his spoof of international banking in his show at Kavi Gupta ten years ago (Here is my review)

But gallery signage doesn’t mention it  - so I take it as just an update on the theme of stately young women - suitable now for a corporate headquarters instead of a mogul’s mansion.

It has the pleasant aesthetic of a quilt or soft sculpture.

Sebastian Vallejo ( b. 1982) Esperando La Tormenta, 2017

Signage tells us that the artist painted this in NewYork while Hurricane Maria was devastating Puerto Rico.  For me, it has the excitement of Van Gogh - so I’m not sure that his reaction was one of despair or anxiety.

…and apparently the MCA thought it was decorative enough for a pillow

Vallejo appeared in a show of young artists at the Puerto Rican Community Center in 2016

and I mentioned him here

Sebastian Vallejo, Paseo por la Costa (walk along the coast), 2020

Vallejo would be an ABX painter- except that his subject is his beloved homeland - not his own troubled mind.

I wish he had a gallery in Chicago.

Omar Velazquez (b. 1984) Caguama, 2020

Signage tells us that this depicts the artist’s encounter with a sea turtle while canoeing in the mangroves near Salinas, Puerto Rico. Possibly he encountered a duck as well, and had fruit and musical instruments on board.

 

It's pleasant and lighthearted, but I'm sure I don't enjoy it as much as the artist did remembering his experience.  I have no interest in seeing it again.

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Allegedly, this exhibit "examines the artistic genealogies and social justice movements that connect Puerto Rico with Chicago" 

 But what's really interesting were the above paintings on display.  They demonstrate a quite fruitful connection between Puerto Rico and the  School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Two of the above artists are currently faculty members ( Alvarez and Lerma), while the rest all studied there.  They have brought so much beauty and joy to a regional art scene that has mostly been interested in other things.

And though it’s anathema to a Modernist sensitivity, most of their work is saturated with nostalgia. If squeezed, the tears could fill buckets.  That’s probably why the curator chose to emphasize something more fashionable like "Activism".

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As Lori Waxman wrote for Hyperallergic:

The real stars of entre horizontes are big, lush paintings invoking no particular politics but using a variety of techniques borrowed from printmaking: Ángel Otero’s and Arnaldo Roche Rabell’s messy kitchen tables, with collaged fabrics and impressed textures; José Lerma’s breathtakingly confident profile of a woman, brushed in inch-thick acrylics with a commercial broom; Nora Maité Nieves’s “Magnetic Field” — two pairs of iridescent geometric patterned canvases.

So she mostly agrees with me — except that I found Nieves’  grid-obsessed  "Magnetic Field" too boring to mention.  She must have studied with a conceptualist like Michelle Grabner while at SAIC.  By the way, some of the other work she shows online is quite different.