June 3 - July 7, 2011
Isolation
Room/Gallery Kit is pleased to announce a June exhibition with work by New
York based artist Pablo Helguera. The works chosen for Isolation Room are
carefully selected, casual looking pen drawings taken from ‘Artoons’.
(For all you literary snobs and New Yorkophiles out there, they display an
uncanny resemblance to New Yorker magazine cartoons.) ‘Artoons’ capture the
alien yet alluring art scene by holding up a mirror to some of the most absurd
art world characters including: the overbearing curator, pretentious theorist,
money grubbing gallerist, failed artist, pathetic wannabe, ignorant expert and
last but not least the beloved but clueless ‘gallerina’. In
contemplating the snarky offerings here at Isolation Room, we are first reminded
of the elegant 19th century French caricaturist Honore
Daumier, but afterward infected by the poisonous venom also found in Ad
Reinhardt’s biting cartoons. Yeah, they are that GOOD. The Artoons represent
harsh truths about the attitudes of a world he knows all too well. Because
Helguera is a prolific award winning artist and his installation, sculpture,
photography, drawing, and performance projects are currently the art world’s
best kept secret it is even more fun to see him ‘bite the hand that feeds’ in
these witty drawings.
Artist biography: Pablo Helguera has exhibited and/or performed at
venues such as the Museum of Modern Art/Gramercy Theater, Museo de Arte Reina
Sofia, Madrid; ICA Boston; RCA London; 8th Havana Biennal, PERFORMA 05, Havana;
Shedhalle, Zurich; MoMA P.S.1, New York; Brooklyn Museum; IFA Galerie, Bonn;
Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum, Tokyo; MALBA museum in Buenos Aires, Ex-Teresa
Espacio Alternativo in Mexico City, The Bronx Museum, Artist Space, and
Sculpture Center, amongst many others. His work has been reviewed in Art in
America, Artforum, The New York Times, ArtNews, amongst others. In 2008 he was
awarded the John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship and
also was the recipient of a 2005 Creative Capital Grant.
In 2011 he was named winner of the International Award of Participatory Art of
the Region Emilia-Romagna in Italy. Since 2007, he has been working as Director
of Adult and Academic programs at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. He has
organized close to 1000 public events in conjunction with nearly 100
exhibitions. In 2010 he was appointed pedagogical curator of the 8th
Mercosul Biennial in Porto Alegre, Brazil, to take place in September 2011.
