Radames “Juni” Figueroa “Current Times, Savage Times”
Taymour Grahne Gallery
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Taymour Grahne Gallery presents Current Times, Savage Times, a solo exhibition of new works by Puerto Rican artist Radames “Juni” Figueroa. This presentation comes a year after Figueroa’s participation in the 2014 Whitney Biennial and solo exhibition at New York’s SculptureCenter. Pairing his familiar Tropical Readymades, with two new series of works: Street Studios and a grouping of hand-written signs, Figueroa ‘tropicalizes’ the gallery’s lower-level project space, reflecting on New York’s urban cityscape while calling attention to the current economic crisis in Puerto Rico.
Figueroa, a native of San Juan, characterizes his practice by creating environments that transmit the experience of living in his hometown. Originally trained as a painter, in 2008 Figueroa’s practice began travelling outside of the studio, where he constructed tropical atmospheres in numerous international spaces, most often assembling drawing, painting, sculpture, and various forms of botanical life in site-specific installations.
In this most recent hybridization of tropical forest meets cityscape, Figueroa indulges in critical humor and highlights the stereotypes that his objects evoke, subverting the traditional notions of the gallery space. Affixed to the gallery’s walls are Figueroa’s Tropical Readymades, a series of cutout and deflated basketballs and soccer balls, repurposed with their botanical partners and situated next to their comparable drawings. Furthering Figueroa’s urban approach, Current Times, Savage Times, underlines the economic crisis in Puerto Rico through a new string of cardboard “readymade” signs, introducing written remarks and cartoons that reflect on Puerto Rico’s urban environments and its surrounding forests.
Media
Schedule
from September 12, 2015 to November 04, 2015
Opening Reception on 2015-09-12 from 18:00 to 20:00