Walter Otero presents Sujeto/objeto by Ramón Miranda-Beltrán
Sujeto/objeto presents a series of related new works including sculptures, projected photographs and an artist book. The series of works proposes a relationship between the materials and forms of our built environment, and the ways in which they in turn structure the relation between subject and territory.
The sculptures included in sujeto/objeto are made out of cement and native woods of Puerto Rico such as maga and palma real. Some of the sculptures rest onto the walls and interrupt the architecture of the exhibition hall. Others serve as support to cement structures. They share a common vocabulary: elemental forms, accesible materials, evident supports, sanded and varnished woods, and human scale. The concrete objects are visibly heavy, they are stacked, lay flat on the floor or rest on the wall, or on cement or palm bark supports.
The projected photographs are views of the coast of San Juan from model apartments in Paseo Caribe and from Caribe Plaza, specifically from a “co-working space” for individuals partially residing in Puerto Rico under new tax exemption laws. These two emblematic housing and office developments construct a new subject through their relationship to ownership and to place as landscape. The view indicates subject’s position, from the interior of the space; domestic and office spaces can be seen reflected on the glass that separates the viewer from the “view to the sea”. The territory and the subject are constructed in relation to each other on material terms—-cement, glass, aluminum—-as well as in the symbolic field—-position, legal framework, and representation of the built coast as “nature”.
Ramón Miranda Beltrán (San Juan de Puerto Rico, 1982) lives and works in Puerto Rico. Miranda Beltrán studied art at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and at the University of Puerto Rico. His work has been shown at Matadero Madrid, the California Museum of Photography (CMP), the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Puerto Rico, the Museo del Barrio in New York and the 2nd Poly/Graphic Triennial of San Juan. His recent solo exhibitions include “Somos Polvo” at the CAAM in Grand Canarias, “Chicago is My Kind of Town” at Julius Caesar in Chicago, and “Arte Lima” (2013), among others. He has also participated in recent collective exhibitions in Atlanta, Gran Canaria and Puerto Rico.
Ramón Miranda Beltrán: sujeto/objeto
June 10th to August 21, 2016
Walter Otero
Casa del Sargento. Calle Sol 300
San Juan, Puerto Rico
