PEPÓN OSORIO
Pepon Osorio's visual language, explosive and elegant, asserts its place
in a polemical art world challenging traditional art canons with richly
textured and layered monumental assemblages that go far beyond accepted
notions of beauty and aesthetics. Diffusing the boundaries between the traditional
and the contemporary, Osorio emphasizes a freedom in process and content
with an exacting use of collected rescued materials. His provocative large-scale,
multi-media installations incorporate a multiplicity of objects such as:
photography, silk-screen, video, and sound to recreate fantasy-like quotidian
environments from barber shops, home interiors and taxis, that advance critical
discussions.
Multiple ideas, concepts, and a plethora of fragments evoke a fluid discourse based in his Latino/Puerto Rican experience, and particularly his nostalgia and desire to reclaim a rich foliage and tropical beauty lost. Environments imbued with a desire for warmth and color recapture memories and evade a fear of emptiness. His bold techniques and inventive manipulation of collected materials house multi-layered constructs based on the articulation of personal investigations and micro-histories recontextualized into conceptual art forms. Osorio's inclusive and participatory art-making process continually defies stereotypes with a body of work that addresses contemporary and artistic issues of ownership, and cultural authenticity. The empowering act of reclaiming symbols and remnants of a resilient culture reveal a body of knowledge that stimulates viewers to question and re-examine their own core values.
Osorio's assemblages and installations are also influenced, in part, from early theatrical and performance collaborations with avant-garde performance artist and choreographer Merian Soto. To this day, his work incorporates a myriad of elements from the Latino experience as well as universal ideas that explore spatial relationships and the presence of human physicality and spirituality.