UMBC's Center for Art and Visual Culture (CAVC) presents "Maria Elena Gonzalez: Selected Works 1996 - 2002" from September 12 through October 26. The exhibition, curated by Renée van der Stelt, CAVC projects coordinator, features recent sculptures and drawings by emerging artist Gonzalez, a Cuban-American artist from New York City. The exhibition will also introduce her public sculpture called Magic Carpet/Home, which will be installed in City Springs Park, near five Baltimore public housing projects, in the spring of 2003. An educational outreach program will accompany the exhibition and public sculpture.
Gonzalez has been investigating the possibilities of formal sculpturefor over a decade. Her work accesses elements of sculpture while reworkingwhat these elements represent, complicating our interaction with form toevaluate identity, emotion, history and the nature of metaphor.
Gonzalez lives and works in Brooklyn. Her drawings, sculptures and installations combine a minimalist aesthetic with a highly personal content, employing powerful metaphors along the way. The events of her life are seen through unpredictable subjects such as cakes, champagne glasses, baseballs and flying carpets. Her work focuses on the body and self with the intention of moving between public and private space. She is committed to changing the standard way of looking at art, by eliminating the distance between object and viewer. Gonzalez incorporates tactile materials, encouraging viewers to do what is often forbidden: touch the art. Her work contains rich and beautiful surfaces such as wood, rubber, lead, tile, feathers and smoke.
A recent focus of Gonzalez's work is the Magic Carpet/Homeprojects. After consultation with the Baltimore City Department of Parks andRecreation, as well as neighborhood organizations and residents, Gonzalezwill install a Magic Carpet/Home sculpture in Baltimore's City Springs Parkin spring 2003. Each Magic Carpet/Home replicates the floor plan for atypical neighborhood apartment, printed on the soft black rubber that isused to surface playgrounds. An undulating structure is built to float the"carpet" above the ground. The dimensions of each piece are determined bythe square footage of the apartment references. After consulting withBaltimore City's Department of Public Housing, she selected a 766square foot one-bedroom apartment from Douglas Homes as her architecturalfloor plan for Magic Carpet/Home.
An intensive educational outreach program for four K-12 schools near City Spring Park will commence in September 2002 and will culminate with theMagic Carpet/Home installation in the spring of 2003. A 36-page brochure,containing an interview with the artist and an essay by Mark Alice Durant, UMBC associate professor of visual arts, will be available at the Center.
The Center for Art and Visual Culture (formerly known as the Fine ArtsGallery) is located on the first floor of the Fine Arts Building. Admission is free. Hours are Tuesday through Saturday from 10 am to 5 pm. For more information, visit www.umbc.edu/art or call x53188.
