Caguas, Puerto Rico
AREA
There are times when an artist unexpectedly breaks away from a trend. Puerto Rico, an island with many creative minds but few institutional frameworks to support them, has recently been the site for works that either confront its ambiguous political situation rather directly and simplistically or limit themselves to representations of tropical clichés. This exhibition stood out against these dominant characteristics. An MFA candidate at the San Francisco Art Institute, Raquel Torres-Arzola, who has been working under the tutelage of her advisor Victor Vázquez, put together a thought-provoking and intelligent show that not only addressed domestic, as well as dogmatic, power structures, but also posited sculpture as a formal and conceptual language of materials through which the intangible is materialized. AREA, a project space and residency program founded seven years ago by collector José Hernández Castrodad, has been a consistent site for the production and promotion of engaging works by young and emerging artists. …see the entire review in the print version of April’s Sculpture magazine.
