Pedro Vélez

Artist and critic Pedro Vélez is known for his “protests”—pithy, eyebrow-raising language running across photographic portraits of friends and colleagues. He has worked consistently to bring national attention to arts communities outside the art-world centers, and these efforts will surely be apparent in his installation for the 2014 Whitney Biennial. While his latest exhibition, “#ProtestSigns,” presents additional vehemence against political and art-world malfeasance, his sharp edges have softened a little. The lush foliage of Puerto Rico, Vélez’s homeland, makes a debut appearance in this work, as does acrylic impasto: The artist has carefully applied many brightly-colored and thick layers of pigment to the surfaces of his vinyl banners, C-prints, collage paintings, and large drawings on paper.

These works are inspired by the corruption scandals of Silvio Berlusconi and Puerto Rican senators, as well as Vélez’s personal relationships, conversations, and tweets. Vélez uses Sharpie markers for his heavy-metal-style lettering, paper for his sign handles, and pushpins to hold everything up. These makeshift qualities belie the years he spent carefully building up their surfaces with layers of paint and paper cutouts. Mónica Rizzo and Credit Rating Degradation, 2014, is a photographic vinyl banner diptych and Vélez’s most uncanny work to date. The bottom banner depicts his parents’ verdant backyard at dusk with a hazy backdrop. A faint downward trail of smoke in the nebulous sky reveals the aftereffects of fireworks on New Year’s Eve, an apt metaphor for Puerto Rico’s present economic situation. On a more positive note, the top banner presents evidence that Vélez’s incarnate version of “Annlee,” another protest he devised in response to Pierre Huyghe and Philippe Parreno’s Annlee manga avatar, continues to thrive in Puerto Rico. In 2003, Vélez made a poster in collaboration with Law Office, a collective from Chicago, with Mónica Rizzo as Annlee and wrote on it PHILLIPPE + PIERRE, YOU CAN’T KILL ANNLEE! SHE IS ALIVE AND WELL, IN PUERTO RICO, critiquing Huyghe and Parreno for having sold the character’s copyright to the independent Annlee Association a year earlier. Eleven years later, Pedro reconnected with Mónica and photographed her again. With a wise, confident look on her face, she is still the artist’s muse.