Jorge Pardo will bring his expanded notion of art practice to
Dia Center for the Arts with a project that completely
transforms the ground floor of Dia's 548 West 22nd Street
facility. A Los-Angeles-based artist, Pardo will richly and
subtly fuse the aesthetic and utilitarian in his renovation of
the Museum's lobby, bookstore, and first-floor gallery.
Pardo's fresh, ebullient design for the 9,000-square-foot space
reconsiders the audience's experience by smoothing circulation,
enhancing visitor amenities, and infusing the ground floor with
natural and refracted light by means of a lively palette of
ceramic tiles in an exhilarating combination of bright limes
and lemons offset by mustard yellows and avocado greens.
The new experience will begin on West 22nd Street as
newly-opened windows and doors expose the fluid space and
inviting colors to passersby. The reconfigured lobby will
feature a relocated main entrance, reception area, and
ticketing facility which opens into Dia's dramatically expanded
bookstore area. Here, the artist will introduce stylish seating
and extensive shelving to house an in-depth selection of artist
monographs and catalogues, contemporary poetry, and volumes on
art history, theory and criticism, as well as works from
Electronic Arts Intermix's unrivalled collection of artist
videos. This enhanced collection will serve as a much-needed
resource in New York City as well as an oasis for comfortable
browsing by gallery visitors. The store will also provide space
for such intimate public programs as book signings, web
launches, and readings.
To reinforce the visual connections between lobby, bookstore,
and exhibition area, Pardo will introduce mural paintings at
these key junctures. The animating presence of these
abstractions, along with the addition of large glass dividers,
will call viewers' attention to the differing qualities and
functions of each of Project's component spaces while at the
same time facilitating smooth visual transitions among them. In
the first-floor gallery, Pardo will present an object chosen
specifically for its iconic and associational values with
regard to the key conceptions underpinning Project.
Jorge Pardo was born in 1963 in Havana, Cuba, and moved to the
United States as a young child. He earned his BFA at Art Center
College of Design in Pasadena and currently resides in Los
Angeles.
Throughout his career, Pardo has mixed work devised for
traditional museum spaces with artistic pursuits sited in other
venues. He has also combined interpretive and creative modes of
artistic practice by assuming the role of curator on
occasion. In 1997, Pardo mounted a rotating exhibition of works
selected from the permanent collection of the Museum of
Contemporary Art, Chicago. This followed a substantial
commission to create a cafe for the Leipzig Messe in Germany in
1996. Last year at the Fabric Workshop and Museum in
Philadelphia, Pardo renovated the reception spaces. The Berlin
Parliament has recently commissioned a large project from Pardo
to be realized in 2001. Pardo's large-scale architectural work
ranges from what was planned as a temporary pier for Sculpture
Project Munster in 1997 but has now become permanent, to a
house, 4166 Sea View Lane, which he presented in 1998 in the
context of a solo exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art,
Los Angeles.
Project, at Dia, will be Pardo's first major presentation in
a New York museum and his most complex and multifaceted
commission to date. The bookstore and lobby components will
remain as a long-term installation, and the gallery space will
revert to its original appearance after two years.
In conjunction with Project, Dia will host a panel discussion
and publish a book that will address multiple aspects of
Pardo's practice, ranging from architecture to design, from
exhibition display to art objects. A lecture in the Robert
Lehman Lectures on Contemporary Art series will be devoted to
Pardo's practice, and the artist will discuss his work with
local junior high school teachers who participate in Dia's Arts
Education Program.
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