The work of Puerto Rican artist Michael D. Linares is on exhibit now at the Museum of Contemporary Art in San Juan. It is the first individual show for Linares in Puerto Rico and is presented as part of the New Tendencies Room exhibition program. The show, Found and Lost, opened today (April 18) and runs through July 12. Included in Found & Lost are paintings, photographs, and video installations. The works originate from existing works of art which are modified so that they reactivate and redirect their latent meanings and underline the constant process of construction, deconstruction and reconstruction of this meaning present in every act of reading. These actions test not only the validity of the works being referenced, but also that of his own work, and suggests the revision of the position of the author as much as that of the spectator.”
The collection explores the idea of the artists as collector. Linares believes that the mere fact of making a selection can be a form of art. He is interested in the notion of art being seen as the conduit for an aesthetic experience, more than as an aesthetic experience in and of itself, which dies right then and there, which is institutionalized, preserved, and deprived of all possibility of revision, re-use, and redefinition.
Linares’ work has been the subject of numerous exhibitions including The Lawrimore Project in Seattle, the Institute of Contemporary Art of Pennsylvania, ‘The Peace Tower’, a project by Mark di Suvero & Rirkrit Tiravanija for the Whitney Biennial (2006), among others. Recently Linares has been included in the publication by Phaidon The Generational: Younger Than Jesus, the Artists Directory’ that will accompany the triennial of the same name in the New Museum, New York (2009).
The photo (top) of You never asked me to be perfect – did you? (2009) can be seen in its original context at http://www.artdaily.org/index.asp?int_sec=2&int_new=30336
For his Arquitectura Invisible see http://www.re-title.com/artists/Michael-Linares.asp
