Working in a variety of media, the artist explores the intellectual and historical myths of European culture, as well as the roots of Latin American identity, through videos and installations that use associative visual metaphors, collage-like techniques and non-linear narrative.
Juan Downey: The Invisible Architect is the first U.S. museum survey of the work of Chilean artist Juan Downey (1940-1993), an unsung video-art pioneer whose career Artforum magazine calls "brilliant and idiosyncratic."
Working in a variety of media, Downey anticipates our current interest in urbanism, post-colonial theory and locality in contemporary art. He explores the intellectual and historical myths of European culture, as well as the roots of Latin American identity, through videos and installations that use associative visual metaphors, collage-like techniques and non-linear narrative.
The Invisible Architect was organized by the MIT List Visual Arts Center and the Bronx Museum of the Arts. The exhibition is supported by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts; Martin E. Zimmerman; the Dedalus Foundation; the Milton & Sally Avery Arts Foundation; and Fundacion Cisneros/Coleccion Patricia Phelps de Cisneros. The ASU Art Museum presentation is made possible by a generous grant from the Bruce T. Halle Family Foundation and with additional support from the Helme Prinzen Endowment and Friends of the ASU Art Museum.
PROGRAMS @ ASU ART MUSEUM
Sept. 30, 6 p.m. “Juan Downey: The Invisible Architect”. Marilys Belt de Downey, director of the Juan Downey Foundation, and Valerie Smith, Head of Visual Arts Department, at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, Germany and curator of Juan Downey: The Invisible Architect.
Oct. 13, 6 p.m. “Remembering Juan Downey”. Chip Lord, media artist and Professor Emeritus at U.C. Santa Cruz, and Adriene Jenik, Director, School of Art, ASU.
Nov. 8, 6 p.m. “Anthropology, Video and Irony”. Leif Jonsson, Associate Professor, ASU.
Image: Juan Downey, detail from "Anaconda Map of Chile," 1973. Photo by Harry Shunk, courtesy of The Juan Downey Foundation.
Media Contact:
Deborah Sussman Susser, 480.965.0014, deborah.susser@asu.edu
Opening reception: Sept. 30, 2011, 7-9 p.m.
The ASU Art Museum
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