AIB welcomes Visiting Artist Luis González Palma
August 14, 2009
Luis González Palma, one of Latin America’s most original and acclaimed artists, will present a two-gallery exhibition and deliver the Inaugural Strauch-Mosse Visiting Artist Lecture at The Art Institute of Boston this fall.
Las sombras de su niñez, Courtesy Schneider Gallery, Chicago
Entitled Jerarquías de Intimidad - Hierarchies of Intimacy, the comprehensive exhibition of 50 works contains large-scale photographs combined with resin, bitumen and gold leaf. In these intricately hand-worked images, González Palma explores new themes and narratives - a hybrid of European and American influences - through the use of symbols and an iconography at once universal and personal.
“I am working on a different representation, but always starting with my constant obsessions: beauty as political power, religious experience charged with love, and pain as explanation of the world and man,” González Palma said. “Emptiness exists in the interpersonal relations of a society that has fallen.”
In one series, La Anunciacion, González Palma collaborates with Argentinean poet and artist Graciela de Oliveira to create a series of large-scale color tableaux that explore aspects of the sacred and profane. In another major work of recent years, Hierarchies of Intimacy, the artist has appropriated the hands and gestures of European Renaissance and Baroque artists like Reni, Murillo and Botticelli to create an installation of Kodalith and gold-leaf tondos.
La desolación de su dulce voz, Courtesty Schneider Gallery, Chicago
The exhibition will take place simultaneously Sept. 10 to Oct. 25 in The Art Institute of Boston’s Main Gallery in Kenmore Square and Gallery at University Hall in Cambridge. The Oct. 1 Inaugural Strauch-Mosse Visiting Artist Lecture, as well as the exhibition, is funded in part by the Strauch-Mosse Endowed Fund for Visiting Artists and the Massachusetts Cultural Council. Lesley University Trustee Hans D. Strauch established the Strauch-Mosse fund last year with a $1 million gift. The exhibition and lecture are both part of Lesley University’s Centennial year celebration.
One of Latin America’s most original and acclaimed artists, González Palma first came to international attention with his luminous and politically charged portraits of indigenous people in his native country of Guatemala. He later moved to Argentina, where he now lives.
González Palma has exhibited widely with over 60 major shows in South America, North America and Europe and has exhibited in the 2001 and 2005 Venice Biennales. Represented by the Robert Mann Gallery in New York City, his work is included in numerous museums including the Art Institute of Chicago; the Maison Europeenne de la Photoraphie, Paris; the Fogg Museum at Harvard University, Cambridge; the High Museum of Art, Atlanta; and the Los Angeles Country Museum of Art. Publications include Poems of Sorrow (Arena Editions, 1999) and Il Silencio de Maya (Peliti Associati, 1998). He last exhibited in Boston at MIT’s List Gallery in 1997.
Jerarquias de Intimidad - Hierarchies of Intimacy
Sept. 10 - Oct. 25
The Art Institute of Boston Main Gallery
700 Beacon St., Boston, MA 02215
Mon.-Fri.: 9 a.m. - 6 p.m.; Sat.: 9 a.m. - 5 p.m.; Sun.: 12 p.m. - 5 p.m.
The Art Institute of Boston Gallery at University Hall
1815 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, MA 02140
Tues.-Wed., Fri.-Sat.: 12 p.m. - 5 p.m.; Thurs.: 3 p.m. - 8 p.m.; Sun.: Closed.
Opening Reception
5 p.m. - 7 p.m., Thursday, Sept. 10
The Art Institute of Boston Main Gallery
700 Beacon St., Boston, MA 02215
The Inaugural Strauch-Mosse Visiting Artist Lecture
7 p.m., Thursday, Oct. 1
Prospect Hall, Lesley University
1803 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, MA 02140
All events are free and open to the public.