Curated by Bonnie Clearwater
Still known primarily for skirting the boundaries of art and design, Jorge Pardo has gone from remaking a variety of consumer items for what he terms “speculative” purposes to shaping the conditions of perception as such. An underlying logic must connect his disparate work—from his 1997 exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, which included a small racing boat amid ever-changing displays, to his “breakthrough” pier at the 1997 Skulptur Projekte Münster and his sculpture-that-is-also-a-house in LA—but what exactly is it? Considering Pardo’s immense ambition and his considerable impact on current production, it is striking that this should be the first major US museum exhibition to grapple with his legacy. The show gathers some sixty works made since 1987 into domestic “vignettes,” emphasizing the curious path that Pardo has negotiated between the logic of site-specificity and that of autonomous art.
