January 18 - March 14, 2013
This exhibition is made possible through the generosity of
WGCU Public Media and The FGCU Center for Environment and Society
Wasmer Gallery - Curated by Jade Dellinger AND ANICA STURDIVANT
About the ARTIST:
Cesar Cornejo’s work addresses socio-political issues with particular focus in the native Peru and the way it translates into international contexts, through the use of processes he has incorporated through his architectural background and his experience living and working in Japan, London, New York and Peru. His work focuses intensely on integrating social elements in sculpture as a means of communication.
His work is collected privately, and is in permanent public collections with the Tokyo National University Fine Arts Museum, the North American Peruvian Cultural Institute, and University Ricardo Palma in Lima, Peru. It has also been exhibited at the Museum Lia Bermudez, Maracaibo, Venezuela; Gallery Jun and Gallery Gyokuei, Tokyo; and in exhibitions in England, New York, and Austria.
Cornejo has received grants, awards, and residencies from the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Kala Arts Institute, New York Foundations for the Arts, Vermont Studio Center, Sculpture Space, and Center for Book Arts NY (US); The British Council, The Arts Council of England, The Henry Moore Institute, Royal British Society of Sculptors, The Art House, and Creative Partnerships Commission (UK); International Symposium Selection and Oficinas do Convento (Portugal); Asahi Art Foundation, Foreign Art Students Prize, Sculpture Biennale Rincon De Ademuz (Spain); and The Tokyo National University Museum of Art, Toride Shou, Public Sculpture Prize, and Japan’s Ministry of Education (Japan).
Lima’s La Primera Newspaper awarded Cornejo The Best of 2005 for La Cantuta, a sculptural homage to victims of Peruvian violence.
Cornejo earned his Bachelor in Architecture from Ricardo Palma University in Peru and his Master of Arts and PhD in Fine Arts (Sculpture) at the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music.
The site specific installation he is creating for Florida Gulf Coast University is related to his work in Puno, Peru which Cornejo will discuss in the Gallery Talk preceding the opening exhibition on Friday, January 18th on Florida Gulf Coast University’s main campus. His work includes architectural installations that investigate new models of relations between the individual and the built environment; through redefining traditional models like the museum, turning it into a community based institution that revitalizes the community, improves living conditions and generates opportunities for financial growth and development; anti-architectural installations that reflect on the repressive role that architecture plays in society, from the private spheres to the institutional ones, sculptures that represent architectural models of larger conceptual models, interactive installations that spatially express and alleviate grief caused by traumatic acts of social injustice, performances that promote communication in unusual circumstances and spaces, photography that modifies images of buildings to create fictional ones that superpose opposite realities. Paintings that are displayed as part of installations that represent the spaces where the objects described originally belonged and drawings which are narratives of situations that address the relation of the individual with architecture.
For more information about Puno MoCA, please visit punomoca.org
About the CURATOR:
Jade Dellinger is an Independent Curator collaborating regularly with the Contemporary Art Museum at the University of South Florida and the Tampa Museum of Art. In 1994, he invited artist Doug Aitken to present his first site-specific video installation "I'd Die for You" at the Pasco Art Center in Holiday, Florida. He curated Maurizio Cattelan’s U.S. museum debut "Choose Your Destination: How to Get a Museum-Paid Vacation" in 1995, and organized the collaborative "Keith Edmier & Evel Knievel" project in 1997 at the USF CAM. With USF CAM Director Margaret Miller, Dellinger co-curated "[re]mediation: The Digital in Contemporary American Printmaking" (the official U.S. participation in the 22nd International Biennal of Graphic Art in Ljubljana, Slovenia). In the interim, Dellinger has curated major solo museum shows for John Cage, Allan McCollum, Lucy Orta, Atelier Van Lieshout, Carlos Amorales, Janaina Tschäpe, Keith Haring, Ann Hamilton & Andrew Deutsch, The Art Guys and others. He has contributed to numerous exhibition catalogues and publications including Sculpture, Flash Art International, Art Papers, Art Lies, Guitar Aficionado and Maurizio Cattelan’s Permanent Food, and co-authored the book, Are We Not Men? We Are DEVO! (SAF Publishing Ltd./UK, 2003/2008), which traces the history of the seminal 1980's New Wave band.
