Arnaldo Morales

Arnaldo Morales
Arnaldo Morales
Born	1967 (age 50–51); Ponce, Puerto Rico
Nationality	Puerto Rican
Education	Escuela de Artes Plásticas
Website	ArnaldoMorales.com

Last updated March 11, 2019

Arnaldo Morales (born 1967) is a Puerto Rico-born, New York-based artist who creates interactive, mechanical sculptures using recycled and fabricated industrial materials.

Early life and education

Morales was born in Ponce, Puerto Rico in 1967. He received his B.A. from Escuela de Artes Plásticas, San Juan, Puerto Rico, in 1994. He moved to New York in 1996.^[1]

Ponce is both a city and a municipality in the southern part of Puerto Rico. The city is the seat of the municipal government.

The Escuela de Artes Plásticas y Diseño de Puerto Rico is an institution of higher learning engaged in the training of students in the visual arts. It is located in Old San Juan, San Juan, Puerto Rico. The school was founded in 1965 as part of the Institute of Puerto Rican Culture. Painter José Torres Martino was one of the school's co-founders. The school's first director was Miguel Pou.

San Juan is the capital and most populous municipality in the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, an unincorporated territory of the United States. As of the 2010 census, it is the 46th-largest city under the jurisdiction of the United States, with a population of 395,326. San Juan was founded by Spanish colonists in 1521, who called it Ciudad de Puerto Rico. Puerto Rico's capital is the third oldest European-established capital city in the Americas, after Santo Domingo, in the Dominican Republic, founded in 1496 and Panama City, in Panama, founded in 1519. Several historical buildings are located in San Juan; among the most notable are the city's former defensive forts, Fort San Felipe del Morro and Fort San Cristóbal, and La Fortaleza, the oldest executive mansion in continuous use in the Americas.

Career

Morales’s work combines found, recycled elements from the waste of aviation, motor sports, household items, the medical industry, public transportation, prisons, pools, playgrounds and other sources with carefully detailed fabricated parts. He creates floor, wall, or ceiling-mounted sculptures (and at times, large-scale public commissions or strap-on, wearable objects) that are activated by viewers. Electric motors, air compressors, pneumatics, and other mechanical systems power their kinetic activity, which is often experienced by viewers as intimidating and dangerous but also exciting.^[1]^[2] His "Animal Instinct" series, for example, consists of sculptures that reference zoomorphic response mechanisms.

Once activated, the works can be seen as darkly ironic commentaries on the fears, ambitions, aggressions, and sexual desires of our current age. Curator Franklin Sirmans writes of Morales’s sculpture, “Although a work may initially look malignant, there is a humor in their finished form and new functionality.”^[3] Cultural critic and curator Carlos McCormick writes, “The beast he breeds is in fact a hybrid, a mutant mutt that is in part an atavistic regression back to visceral power and visceral potency of the machine, and also very much a part of the current situation in which the vestiges of the industrial epoch have become an arcane future.” ^[4] Writer and curator Linda Weintraub describes his work as "formally elegant, meticulously crafted, cleverly conceived, and mischievously aggressive."^[1]

Franklin Sirmans is an American art critic, editor, writer, curator and has been the director of the Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM) since October 2015. His initiatives there include ensuring that PAMM's art program reflects the community in Miami and securing donations. In his first six months at PAMM, he managed to secure the largest donation of works in the museum's short history, over a hundred pieces of art were donated by Design District developer Craig Robins.

Linda Weintraub is an American art writer, educator and curator. She has written several books on contemporary art. Her most recent works address environmental consciousness that defines the ways cultures approach art, science, ethics, philosophy, politics, manufacturing, and architecture.

Morales was included by the critic Manuel Alvarez Lezama among a group of Puerto Rican artists that he singled out as “Los Novísimos” (The Newest Ones). Lezama considers this group of Puerto Rican artists, who came of artistic age in the 1990s, as notable for their infusion of provocative work into the contemporary Puerto Rican art scene.^[5] The importance of Puerto Rican artists of this generation is, as museum director Silvia Karman Cubiña writes, "their social dimension and the potential for interaction with others."^[6]

With the country's ethnically diverse background, Puerto Rican art reflects many diverse influences.

Morales's work has appeared in galleries and museums in the United States, Puerto Rico, Europe, and Mexico, including the Museum of Arts and Design (New York), the Kunsthalle Winterthur (Switzerland), the Museo d’Arte Provincia di Nuoro (Sardinia, Italy), the Museu de les Ciències Príncipe Felipe (Valencia, Spain), MoMA PS1 (New York), the Centro Cultural de Arte Contemporánea, (Mexico), and The Living Art Museum (Reykjavik, Iceland). His work is included in private collections across the United States and Puerto Rico, as well as the permanent collections of Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico, Museo de Arte Contemporánea, and Museo de la Universidad de Puerto Rico (all in San Juan); El Museo del Barrio and Chase Manhattan Bank (New York); and the John Michael Kohler Arts Center (Sheboygan, WI). His work has been supported by residencies and fellowships from the Islip Art Museum, the Jerome Foundation, the New York Foundation for the Arts, and other institutions.

The Museum of Arts and Design (MAD), based in Manhattan, New York City, collects, displays, and interprets objects that document contemporary and historic innovation in craft, art, and design. In its exhibitions and educational programs, the Museum celebrates the creative process through which materials are crafted into works that enhance contemporary life.

The Museu de les Ciències Príncipe Felipe is an important visitor attraction in Valencia, Spain. It forms part of the City of Arts and Sciences, and can be found at the end of Luis García Berlanga street. Its director is Spanish science writer and television personality, Manuel Toharia.

MoMA PS1 is one of the largest art institutions in the United States dedicated solely to contemporary art. It is located in the Long Island City neighborhood in the borough of Queens, New York City. In addition to its exhibitions, the institution organizes the Sunday Sessions performance series, the Warm Up summer music series, and the Young Architects Program with the Museum of Modern Art. MoMA PS1 has been affiliated with the Museum of Modern Art since January 2000 and, as of 2013, attracts about 200,000 visitors a year.

He is an Associate of the Los Angeles-based Institute of Cultural Inquiry. He is married to curator Deborah Cullen.

The Institute of Cultural Inquiry (ICI) is a non-profit organization located in Los Angeles, California. The ICI states that its mission is "to educate the public about the visual methods used in society to describe and discuss cultural phenomena." The ICI sponsors art projects, performances, exhibitions, symposia, and publications related to its major areas of interest, which include the AIDS pandemic, obsolete technologies, and marginal cultural figures.

Deborah Cullen is an American art curator with a specialization in Latin American and Caribbean art.

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References

1 2 3 Weintraub, Linda. In the Making: Creative Options for Contemporary Artists. New York: D.A.P., pp. 94-101.
↑ Shuster, Robert. "Shock Art". The Village Voice, Oct. 2, 2007.
↑ Sirmans, Franklin. Arnaldo Morales: Animalítica. Exhibition brochure, Galería Botello, San Juan, Puerto Rico, 1999.
↑ McCormick, Carlo. “Arnaldo Morales.” Poliester Magazine, Summer 1996, pp. 42-47.
↑ Alvarez Lezama, Manuel. "The Aesthetic Warriors." Venue/The San Juan Star, October 15, 1995, pp. 16-17.
↑ Karman Cubiña, Silvia. “Notes on Neoconceptualism from Puerto Rico.” In None of the Above: Contemporary Work by Puerto Rican Artists. Hartford, CT: Real Art Ways, 2004, p. 23.

External links

Arnaldo Morales website

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[weintraub-1] 1 2 3 Weintraub, Linda. In the Making: Creative Options for Contemporary Artists. New York: D.A.P., pp. 94-101.

[vv-2] Shuster, Robert. "Shock Art". The Village Voice, Oct. 2, 2007.

[sirmans-3] Sirmans, Franklin. Arnaldo Morales: Animalítica. Exhibition brochure, Galería Botello, San Juan, Puerto Rico, 1999.

[mccormick-4] McCormick, Carlo. “Arnaldo Morales.” Poliester Magazine, Summer 1996, pp. 42-47.

[alvarez-5] Alvarez Lezama, Manuel. "The Aesthetic Warriors." Venue/The San Juan Star, October 15, 1995, pp. 16-17.

[karman-6] Karman Cubiña, Silvia. “Notes on Neoconceptualism from Puerto Rico.” In None of the Above: Contemporary Work by Puerto Rican Artists. Hartford, CT: Real Art Ways, 2004, p. 23.