FROM:
HUNTER COLLEGE EAST HARLEM ART GALLERY
Contact: Mariluz Hoyos, Associate Curator
mhoyos@hunter.cuny.edu
212.396.7819
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
HUNTER COLLEGE EAST HARLEM ART GALLERY PRESENTS
“JORGE PINEDA: SHADOWS AND OTHER FAIRY TALES”
SEPTEMBER 28 – DECEMBER 28
(New York, NY, September 18, 2012) - The Hunter College East Harlem Art Gallery will
present Jorge Pineda: Shadows and Other Fairy Tales from September 28 through December
28, 2012. The gallery is located in Hunter College’s Lois V. and Samuel Silberman School
of Social Work building at 2180 Third Avenue at 119th Street, Manhattan.
The first US solo exhibition of Dominican artist Jorge Pineda, Shadows and Other Fairy Tales,
features two major art installations. The exhibition presents one of Pineda’s most representative
works to date, The Forest: Lies (Version III, 2006), a psychologically charged artwork
characteristic of Pineda’s blend of drawing and installation. Pineda has also conceived a new
installation for this exhibition: Oh Taschen, Taschen, Taschen! Wild Girls Without a Mask
(2012) composed of double portraits of ninety-three international women artists that uses
Taschen’s publication Women Artists of the 20th and 21st Century as a point of departure. The
work is an inventory-like accumulation of portraits that juxtaposes drawings depicting the faces
of each artist, and acrylic paintings of Lucha Libre masks that conform to the artists’ features.
The exhibition illustrates how the artist explores the psychological shaping of individuals and
society, the interaction of the conscious and unconscious, and the interplay of visibility and
concealment involved in this process.
Pineda belongs to the generation of Dominican installation artists who, toward the end of the
1980s and in the early ’90s, transformed the artistic scene in Santo Domingo by broadening the
range of themes and mediums of expression in Dominican art. He experiments with a variety of
media, but it is his signature combination of drawing and installation that has gained him
recognition in Spain and throughout the Americas. The Forest: Lies (Version III) is composed of
dense, uncontrolled lines drawn vigorously directly on the wall, a mass that expands until it
reaches the confines of the gallery space, ultimately revealing its root: A life-size sculpture of a
child wearing a red hood, her face hidden against the wall.
Pineda started incorporating masks in his artworks toward the end of the 1990s; when he depicts
his subjects he often obscures their faces. Oh Taschen, Taschen, Taschen! Wild Girls Without a
Mask marks a new direction for the artist, removing the masks and presenting viewers with
seemingly straightforward portraits, demonstrating that the traditional portrait is as illusory as the
masked versions, rather than revealing the subject’s “real” identity.
Jorge Pineda was born in the coastal town of Barahona, located in the eponymous province at the
southwest edge of the Dominican Republic. A self-taught draftsman, Pineda studied architecture
at the Universidad Autónoma de Santo Domingo from 1978 to 1981, and lithography in the
Bordas Studio in Paris in 1989. He has had solo shows in Gijón, Lima, Lyon, Madrid, and Santo
Domingo, and has taken part in numerous national and international group exhibitions. Pineda
currently lives and works in Santo Domingo and Madrid.
Jorge Pineda: Shadows and Other Fairy Tales was curated by Mariluz Hoyos, Associate
Curator, Hunter College East Harlem Art Gallery. This exhibition and its public programs are
funded in part by the Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros.
About the Gallery:
The Hunter College East Harlem Art Gallery opened its doors in September of 2011 at the
Silberman School of Social Work Building. The gallery is a space for initiating partnerships
between different departments and academic disciplines. It presents exhibitions and public events
that aim to foster academic collaboration at Hunter College while addressing subjects relevant to
the East Harlem community, including those related to Latin America and the Caribbean. For
more information, please visit http://www.hunter.cuny.edu/eastharlem-artgallery
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