Including over 40 artists living and working within 200 miles of the US/Mexico border the Biennial 2013 is fascinating glimpse at the diversity and vibrancy of cultural production of this region. Including two artworks by each artist this exhibition constitutes the third collaboration between the El Paso Museum of Art and the Museo de Arte INBA - Cd. Juárez. Carefully selected by the jurors Yoshoa Okon and Cesareo Moreno the Biennial 2013 will result in a purchase prize of one artwork, a solo museum exhibition for one artist at both museums and a SOMA residency in Mexico City. The Bienal Ciudad Juarez El Paso Biennial is the only exhibition of its type in existence and in 2011 received an award for U.S.- Mexico cross-border cooperation and innovation from the Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars.
Exhibition Supporters include the Consulate General of Mexico, El Paso, and the US Consulate, Ciudad Juárez.
Featured Artists:
Mónica Arreola
Mely Barragán Chávez
Gabriel Boils Terán
Gabriela Buenrostro Solórzano
Angel Cabrales
Margarita Cabrera
Alejandro Cartagena
Pablo Casteńeda
Saulo Salvador Cisneros Sánchez
Mark Clark
Julia Curran
Ismael de Anda III
Jamex and Einar de la Torre
Francisco Delgado
Gaspar Enriquez
Alfredo Espinoza Gutierrez
Fidelius X (Fidel Hernández)
Vincent N. Figliola
David Garza
Nabil Gonzalez
Tm Gratkowski
Olga Guerra
Carlos Gutierrez
Robert Jackson Harrington
Luis G. Hernandez
Amanda Jaffe
Héctor Manuel Jaramillo López (Daniel López)
Anthony Lazorko
Eder Lindorfe
Gabriel Luis Perez
César A. Martínez
Jeffrey Miranda
José Manuel Mireles Reyes
Diana Molina
Alejandro Morales
Oscar Moya
Elel Parra
Priscila Alejandra Pérez Peralta
Jessica Pizańa Roberts
David Politzer
Carlos Humberto Ramírez Lara
Francisco Javier Rosales Chávez
Marci Ivette Santos Guzmán
Lourdes (Luly) Sosa Espinoza
Werc (Jari Alvarez Rivera)
Miguel Zambrano Meza
Impressions East·South·West: Mabel May Woodward
June 2 – July 21, 2013
Peter and Margaret de Wetter Gallery
Mabel May Woodward (American 1877–1945) Beach Scene, Green Umbrella, no date
Oil on canvas
10 ½ x 13 ½ in.
Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Buddy Frank
El Paso Museum of Art Collection
Mabel May Woodward (American 1877-1945) Doorway, no date
Oil on canvas
10 x 13 in.
Gift of Abraham and Faye Adler
El Paso Museum of Art Collection
Mabel May Woodward (American 1877-1945) Apple Orchard, no date
Oil on canvas
16 x 20 in.
Gift of Lena Glaser
El Paso Museum of Art Collection
Mabel May Woodward (1877–1945) was born in Providence, Rhode Island, where she began her formal training at the Rhode Island School of Design. In 1898 she went to New York to study at the Art Students’ League, where her teachers included the American Impressionists Frank Vincent DuMond and William Merritt Chase. Woodward later considered both men to be major influences on her career; and, as critic Frank Sisson wrote in 1938 in the Providence Journal, Woodward embraced “a kind of impressionism…or a development of impressionism to a more descriptive painting.” In 1900 the painter returned to her historic hometown of Providence and began a long teaching career at her alma mater, the Rhode Island School of Design. The first woman elected President of the Providence Art Club, she became the most prominent Rhode Island female painter around the turn of the century.
Woodward is particularly known for scenes of her native New England—Providence; Ogunquit, Maine; Old Lyme, Connecticut (where she painted with DuMond). Yet she also painted in Europe, Canada, Florida, and elsewhere. In this regard, the El Paso Museum of Art is fortunate to hold over seventy-five works by Woodward that include pictures of all these locales. The museum also owns several examples of a little-known side to Woodward’s extensive geographic range: her views of the landscape and life of Taos and other Southwestern sites. Thus Impressions East·South·West: Mabel May Woodward features a select choice of approximately twenty paintings from the EPMA collection that highlight scenes of New England alongside vignettes from Florida and views of the landscape, architecture, and life of the Southwest. The exhibition will also present open pages from five Woodward sketchbooks housed in the museum; as we study the artist’s lively sketches of figures in motion, we can appreciate her initiating at the Rhode Island School of Design the study of the human figure as machine rather than stationary object, a course known as the Action Class. Ultimately, in all of Woodward’s paintings—from East, South, and West—the viewer feels the painter’s ease with color and paint, and the artist’s joy in recording her impressions of light, landscape, and comfortably inhabited nature.
Margarita Cabrera August 28 – August 4, 2013
Patricia and Jonathan Rogers Grand Lobby
Margarita Cabrera (American, 1973 - ) Arbol de la Vida: John Deere Model 790, 2007
Ceramic, slip paint and steel hardware
Courtesy of the artist
Margarita Cabrera
For the next two years, from August 2011 until August 2013, the El Paso Museum of Art will feature eleven artworks from the last ten years by the Monterrey, Mexico born artist Margarita Cabrera. Cabrera first became known for her soft-sculptures of commercial products such as coffeemakers and blenders manufactured at US-owned maquiladoras in Mexico to serve as reminders of the labor involved. In time Cabrera’s concern for the role of laborers who build American products outside the United States outgrew her interest in the objects themselves, and she began to organize projects that involved the work of artisans from immigrant communities. Cabrera’s Arbol de la Vida John Deere Model 790 is the result of a project involving the creation of a life-size replica of a John Deere tractor in clay, the "tree of life" for many workers in the agricultural community. Cabrera`s cross-cultural perspective allows her artistic practice to involve the political, social and emotional aspects of two distinct, yet closely connected cultures. Cabrera lives and works in El Paso.
Margarita Cabrera – Biography
Margarita Cabrera was born in 1973 in Monterrey, Mexico. She lived in Mexico City for ten years and then immigrated to the U.S. with her family. She received an MFA from Hunter College in New York, NY. Cabrera currently lives and works in El Paso, TX. Her most recent exhibitions include a solo show entitled Pulso y Martillo at UC Riverside Sweeney Art Gallery, Riverside, CA, during which she debuted two performance works. Her work was also included in New Image Sculpture at the McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, TX and the Trans/Action at Guadalupe Cultural Art Center, San Antonio, TX. Her work has been included in Los Angeles County Museum of Art, CA; Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, TX; El Museo del Barrio, New York, NY; Sun Valley Center for the Arts, Ketchum, ID and San Jose Museum of Art, CA. In 2008 she was a resident artist at ArtPace, San Antonio, TX. Cabrera is the recipient of a Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant and was a finalist for the Texas Prize in 2007. Cabrera is represented by Walter Maciel Gallery in Los Angeles, CA.
Contemporary Texas Prints
March 31 – September 15, 2013
Gateway Gallery
David Bates
Full Moon, 1992
Mixed media & woodcut, 45 1/4 x 38 1/4”
Purchase with funds of anonymous donors
2005.13
Contemporary printmaking in Texas is a fascinating field with just about as many practitioners and many variations as one can imagine. The abundance of Texas printmakers and the vibrancy of this medium stand out on a national scale comparable with the state’s size. This popularity and reputation has everything to do with the changing role of the print in contemporary art and culture. This exhibition demonstrates how the artists and collecting institutions themselves are defying traditional hierarchies that previously defined printmaking as a lesser art media.
For example the El Paso Museum of Art has over the years paid close attention to the art of printmaking and in addition to building a strong collection of prints by Texas artists from the Depression era through the Second World War has also gathered numerous prints by contemporary Texan artists. With this exhibition the El Paso Museum of Art celebrates this note-worthy collection.
The woodcuts, etchings, aquatints, lithographs, linocuts, serigraphs, and mono-prints included here should be seen as a sampling of the printmaking abundance that can be found throughout the Lone Star state. Artists such as David Bates, Luis Jimenez, Donald Judd and James Surls are only four of the many Texas artists for whom printmaking has become an essential part of their artistic practice.
Our Lady of Sorrows
April 28 – November 3, 2013
Dorrance and Olga Roderick Gallery: Retablo Niche
Anonymous
Our Lady of Sorrows, 18th C,
oil on copper, 13 ¼ x 11”
Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Richard G. Miller
1977.1.11
The latest in the series of themed exhibitions from the Museum’s growing collection of retablos is Nuestra Senora Dolorosa/ Our Lady of Sorrows. Established in the late 14th century the theme of Our Lady of Sorrows is meant to show homage to the suffering of Christ’s mother over the death of her son. Deliberately formulated to also inspire cultic devotion these retablos typically symbolize Mary’s sorrows by depicting a sword piercing her breast or in a grieving pose with hands clasped. Also included are retablos which depict Our Lady of Sorrows with symbols of Christ’s Passion to further emphasize his suffering. These nineteen works of art from the 18th and 19th were produced by trained and self-taught anonymous, Mexican artists whose spiritual devotion to this subject motivated their artistic abilities.
