Charles Juhász-Alvarado:
Jardín de Frutos Prohibidos/ZONA FRANCA
(The Garden of the Forbidden Fruit/DUTY FREE)
July 12 - August 16, 2002
The Fabric Workshop and Museum (FWM) is pleased to present a new installation
by Charles Juhász-Alvarado. Jardín de Frutos Prohibidos/ZONA
FRANCA represented Puerto Rico in the 2002 Sao Paulo Biennial.
Educational programming in collaboration with Taller Puertoriqueño
is scheduled for this exhibition.
With a massive floor and fringed pillows enveloped with images of flora and
fauna native to Puerto Rico, Jardín de Frutos Prohibidos/ZONA
FRANCA plows an exuberant garden proposal into the San Juan airport's
green area, telling a story of customs. Charles Juhász-Alvarado's
sculptural projects have always included the challenge of direct public
participation. In this installation, the public enters the gallery to find
themselves within what feels like an airport lounge. On the walls are a
series of photo-narrative billboards flashing textual anecdotes of passengers
arguing/negotiating with agriculture customs officers concerning their travel
with forbidden fruit.
Jardín de Frutos Prohibidos/ZONA FRANCA bears fruit that
includes tropical delicacies such as mangoes, tamarind, root vegetables and
pigeon peas. On closer inspection, further delicacies sprout: the fauna of the
Caribbean island (and perhaps one's imagination) is entangled with the flora
of the proposed airport garden. Thousands of figures, humans, animals,
insects, fruit and references to art history, are camouflaged in a refreshing
green shade. The growing orgy, allegedly the result of planting the
confiscated fruit, raises questions as to which customs these officers watch
over, and conversely, what reasons anyone would have not to postpone their
departure from this rich port long enough to consume and seed its voluptuous
garden or flirt with its controls. A Duty Free shop carrying souvenir items
of the installation completes the project. During the presentation of the
project at the 2002 Sao Paulo Biennial, Juhász-Alvarado and his staff
added to this f(r)iction, greeting the public dressed up as customs officials,
shopkeepers and flight attendants.
Past work by Juhász-Alvarado have also included narrative and
performative elements. Aquí se construye el Museo de Arte de Puerto
Rico; el comején nos hará mierda (1998) was originally
presented at the actual site of a major new art museum under construction in
San Juan. Instead of exhibition announcement cards, Juhász-Alvarado
posted flyers of photographs along with a fictional newspaper story depicting
the museum's work crew shamelessly drinking rum, hanging out with prostitutes,
playing with construction materials, and defecating "sculpturally" in the
future museum's galleries. The narrative text told the story of an outraged
artist who was part of this work crew but was determined to finish the
building and inaugurate it with a show of his own artwork. The meanings behind
these scandalous gestures grew in tension as the public visited the offended
site and encountered an installation credited to the insolent work crew: a
"magnificent maximalist construction," as critic David Levi-Strauss described
it.
Charles Juhász-Alvarado was born at Clark AFB in the Philippines in
1965 and grew up in Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic. He received his
BA from Yale University in 1988 and his MFA in Sculpture from the Yale School
of Art, Yale University in 1994. A resident of San Juan, Puerto Rico,
Juhász-Alvarado's group exhibitions include: Canal de la Mona: Zona
de Turbulencia, Here and There/Aqui y Allá, El Museo Del Barrio
(New York, NY, 2001); the 2002 Sao Paulo Biennial (Sao Paulo, Brazil, 2002);
and Pol&iiacute;ticas de la Diferencia, a traveling exhibition with
venues in Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela, Mexico, the US and Spain. Solo shows
include: F, held at the Clough-Hanson Gallery at Rhodes College
(Memphis, Tennessee, 2002); Tu-Tran, held at Espai 13 of the
Fundación Miró (Barcelona, Spain 1999); Canal de la Mona:
Zona de Turbulencia at Interarte (Valencia, Spain, 1999); and Punto de
Fuga, at the Museo de Arte de Ponce (Ponce, Puerto Rico 1998).
The exhibition program of The Fabric Workshop and Museum is supported by The
Pew Charitable Trusts, the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, National
Endowment for the Arts, LLWW Foundation, The Philadelphia Cultural Fund,
Independence Foundation, The Claneil Foundation, Philip Morris Companies, the
Miller-Plummer Foundation, The Barra Foundation, and the Board of Directors
and members of The Fabric Workshop and Museum.
For Press Information, contact P.R. Coordinator at the Fabric Workshop
and Museum, 215.568.1111 or
kathryn@fabricworkshopandmuseum.org
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