Tabloids are series of newspapers that are produced in relation to specific exhibitions. One side of the newspaper pages, patterns (usually determined by elements within the exhibitions) are printed. These are used as wallpapers to designate particular spaces within the exhibition sites. The rest ofthe newspapers are used to present materials that in some way expand or question the conceptual scope of the exhibition.
Gean Moreno & Ernesto Oroza. 2008
Visit: http://thetabloid.org/

{besps}wallpaper{/besps}

(english version):

Gean Moreno / Ernesto Oroza
Farside Gallery. Miami
by José Antonio Navarrete / Arte Al Dia International, July 2010

Decoy, the exhibition of works by Gean Moreno and Ernesto Oroza, gathers together objectual constructions whose conformation and referential potential are the result, in each case, of interactions of varying degree and nature between different disciplines, models and systems of cultural production. I include as examples, in an incomplete list, urban planning, architecture, sculpture, design, interior decoration, museography, essayist literature and publishing activities.

The basic regulator of these interactions is the research work and reflection that both artists have engaged in during the past few years. Established as a methodology, the expansion and enrichment of that work has been put to the test, consecutively, in the different projects implemented within its framework. We would even go further in the case of the example we are addressing: besides shedding light on some aspects of the exhibition, “Notes on the Moiré House (Or, ‘Urbanism’ for Emptying Cities)”, the text authored by both artists and included in the tabloid that accompanies Decoy, represents a moment in the development of a line of thought whose elaborations, previously disseminated, also serve as methodological support for the strategies applied in the show. Likewise, the elements and structures physically displayed in the exhibition space already form part of or are on the way to become configured as a series of conceptual and material sys- tems and tools in an ongoing process of growth that Moreno and Oroza have forged, progressively, under the principle of diagram design. Theirs are, therefore, modelizations with a high level of pragmatic capacity, adaptable to very different installation and operation situations, and with functional possibilities of use outside the field of art, ultimately their place of origin.

In terms of artistic deed, Decoy features a close relationship with the problems of the contemporary city and the ways of inhabiting it, as well as with the production processes, the con- sumption flows and the new social behaviors that characterize the latter, but I would dare say that it communicates interstitially with one of the richest trends of the European avantgarde: the one that put into circulation the notion of the link between art work production life. It is true that, setting itself apart from the celebration of technique and of social redemption that nourished the approaches to the subject elaborated by the Bauhaus and by Russian productivism, what Decoy proposes as strategy is the use of any material and opportunity available for the popular invention of alternatives to the impositions of consumerism; however, of the demythologizing impulse of artistic practice associated to this modern trend, Decoy con- serves what was perhaps its most important trait: the interest in fusing (confusing) art into (with) architecture, design and, in general, the processes of material production.

Perhaps the notion of diagram central to Moreno and Oroza’s current discursive speculations, as we pointed out before might be fitting as metaphor to represent the research exhibition project that both artists are articulating jointly. In that case, Decoy would be something like one of the components or operations of that project: a place to situate oneself inside their diagram.

review (spanish version):
Gean Moreno / Ernesto Oroza
Farside Gallery. Miami
por José Antonio Navarrete / Arte Al Dia International, Julio 2010

Decoy, muestra de Gean Moreno y Ernesto Oroza, reúne construcciones objetuales cuya conformación y potencialidad referencial resulta en cada caso de interacciones de carácter y grado variables entre distintas disciplinas, modelos y sistemas de la producción cultural. Incluyo como ejemplos, en una lista incompleta: el urbanismo, la arquitectura, la escultura, el diseño, la decoración interior, la museografía, la literatura ensayística y la labor editorial.

El regulador básico de esas interacciones es el trabajo de investigación y reflexión que los dos artistas han desplegado durante los últimos años. Constituido como metodología, la expansión y enriquecimiento de este trabajo han sido puestos a prueba, consecutivamente, en los diferentes proyectos realizados dentro de su cauce. Diríamos más, atendiendo al ejemplo que nos atañe: “Notes on the Moiré House (Or, ‘Urbanism’ for Emptying Cities)”, el texto con autoría de ambos incluido en el tabloi- de que acompaña a Decoy, además de iluminar algunos aspectos de la exposición se inserta como un momento del desarrollo de un pensamiento cuyas elaboraciones previamente difundidas también sirven de soporte metodológico a las estrategias que se aplican en ésta. Por igual, los elementos y estructuras dispuestos físicamente en el espacio de exhibición ya forman parte de o se encaminan a configurarse como una serie en crecimiento hasta el presente de sistemas y herramientas conceptuales y materiales que Moreno y Oroza han fraguado, de manera progresiva, bajo el principio del diagrama. Se trata, en consecuencia, de modelizaciones con una elevada capacidad pragmática, adaptables a situaciones de instalación y desenvolvimiento muy diferentes y con posibilidades funcionales de uso fuera del campo del arte, su lugar de origen en última instancia.

En tanto hecho artístico, Decoy se postula en relación estrecha con las problemáticas de la ciudad contemporánea y los modos de habitarla, así como con los procesos de producción, los flujos de consumo y los nuevos comportamientos sociales que caracterizan a la última, pero me atrevería a decir que se comunica intersticialmente con una de las tendencias más ricas de la vanguardia europea: aquélla que puso en circulación la idea del vínculo existente entre arte trabajo producción vida. Es cierto que, a distancia de la celebración de la técnica y la redención social que alimentó los enfoques sobre el tema elaborados por la Bauhaus y el productivismo ruso, lo que Decoy propone como estrategia es el aprovechamiento de cualquier material y oportunidad disponibles para la invención popular de alternativas a las imposiciones de consumo; sin embargo, del impulso desmitificador de la práctica artística asociado a esa tendencia moder- na, Decoy conserva lo que quizás fuera en ella más importante: el interés por fundir (confundir) el arte en (con) la arquitectura, el diseño y, en general, los procesos de la producción material. Tal vez la noción de diagrama central para las especulaciones discursivas actuales de Moreno y Oroza, como señalamos antes podría ser apropiada como metáfora de representación del proyecto de investigación exposición que ambos están articulando conjuntamente. En ese caso, Decoy sería algo así como uno de los componentes u operaciones de ese proyecto: un lugar para situarse en el interior de su diagrama.

Lies and poems. 2010

Editor: P. Scott Cunningham. University of Wynwood - www.universityofwynwood.org
Cover: Jim Drain
Lies and Poems was part of a tabloid (#10) that accompanied Gean Moreno and Ernesto Oroza’s
participation in the exhibition New Work Miami 2010, Miami Art Museum.
Lies and Poems was published in July 2010, in a run of 5000 copies.
Textos Moiré 2010
www.textosmoire.org

Gean Moreno / Ernesto Oroza. Farside Gallery. Miami. On View May 6-June 6, 2010

{besps}decoy{/besps}
{besps_c}0|1decoy-moreno-oroza-2010.jpg|Gean Moreno and Ernesto Oroza. Untitled (decoy), 2010.|Wood and found tiles. Functional object 48” x 48” x 12”{/besps_c}
{besps_c}0|2decoy-moreno-oroza-2010.jpg|Gean Moreno and Ernesto Oroza. Untitled (decoy), 2010.|Wood and found tiles. Functional object 48” x 48” x 12”{/besps_c}
{besps_c}0|3decoy-moreno-oroza-2010.jpg|Gean Moreno and Ernesto Oroza. Untitled, 2009.|Cushings, T-shirts and refills, 16x16 in each{/besps_c}
{besps_c}0|4decoy-moreno-oroza-2010.jpg|Tonel. Telarte pattern for Tabloid 8, 2009.|newspaper{/besps_c}
{besps_c}0|5decoy-moreno-oroza-2010.jpg|Gean Moreno and Ernesto Oroza. Studio Scrap Stools 2, 2010.|plywood{/besps_c}
{besps_c}0|6decoy-moreno-oroza-2010.jpg|Gean Moreno and Ernesto Oroza. Untitled, 2010.|Newsprint and printed matter{/besps_c}

TABLOID #8: This tabloid was produced by Gean Moreno and Ernesto Oroza for the exhibition DECOY. Farside Gallery 2010. Miami, FL.
Textile pattern by Tonel, mass produced as part of the cultural initiative TelArte, Havana 1987, altered by Gean Moreno and Ernesto Oroza, 2010.
Special thanks to Tonel for allowing us to use his work.
8 pages. Blue. Edition of 1000

From press release:
(Miami, FL) -For the exhibition Decoy, Ernesto Oroza and Gean Moreno are producing an abstracted interior in the guise of a reading room. In it, nothing is what it seems: a graphic/decorative figure is actually a schematized image pulled from a partially successful effort to join art and mass production (TelArte); the typology of a bench is folded into that of a table which, in turn, is folded into that a display structure; a set of funky tiles stand in as shorthand diagrams of procedures witnessed at the local salvage yard from where they were reclaimed; a tabloid (as a medium for information distribution) is inseparable from a wallpaper as a decorative structure, but the wallpaper presents its own non-decorative information; cushions sewn out of old T-shirts double as a starting archive of graphics that have taken root in our vernacular landscapes. Things acquire two and three identities and negotiate precarious balances between them. Somewhere in all this, one can begin to discern what is important to Oroza and Moreno: crisscrossing functional patterns in order to produce astute artifacts; testing the possibility of objects feed on tactical logics which, despite their proclivity for tending to the necessary with impressive economy, are all-too-often relegated to one kind of margin or another; formulating tentative theorems on what possibilities are still viable and vital for object production and urban experience.

Photo:Alesh Houdek

Curatorial Statement by Rene Morales

The work of Gean Moreno and Ernesto Oroza revolves around two central interests: the social forces that shape the urban landscapes, and the idea of tapping into what they term the “preexisting infrastructures” that they have at their disposal as artists working on a project-to-project basis.

When they were approached by MAM to participate in NWM2010, they identified the museum’s tradition of publishing “gallery notes” for each exhibition and proposed folding the content of the brochure (curatorial essays, a calendar of events, sponsors’ logos, a survey questionnaire, etc.) into the ongoing series of tabloid newspapers that they produce as part of their commissions; they consider these publications to be the primary elements of their projects.

The lower expense of the tabloid format allows for the publication of three 16-page editions (one for each month of the exhibition), which will be distributed at several locations throughout the city.

<<click on the image for more views>>

{slimbox single images/stories/showcwg1.jpg,images/stories/showcwg1.jpg,Spit-Polishing a Starless Sky/Outer Space; images/stories/showcwg2.jpg,images/stories/showcwg2.jpg,Spit-Polishing a Starless Sky/Outer Space; images/stories/showcwg5.jpg,images/stories/showcwg5.jpg, Spit-Polishing a Starless Sky/Outer Space; images/stories/showcwg4.jpg,images/stories/showcwg4.jpg,Spit-Polishing a Starless Sky/Outer Space; images/stories/showcwg6.jpg,images/stories/showcwg6.jpg,Spit-Polishing a Starless Sky/Outer Space; images/stories/showcwg7.jpg,images/stories/showcwg7.jpg,Spit-Polishing a Starless Sky/Outer Space}

Bhakti Baxter, Nicolas Lobo, Gean Moreno, Daniel Newman, Ernesto Oroza, and Gavin Perry will be featured in the exhibition, Spit-Polishing a Starless Sky/Outer Space, at Charest-Weinberg Gallery, from September 12 through October 5, 2009. The opening reception will be on September 12 from 6pm to 9 pm at 250 NW 23rd Street, Space 408, Miami, FL 33127.

The exhibition is comprised of two different exhibitions that have been superimposed without any attempt to make them cohere. Two sets of information have simply been brought together, and the resulting form of the exhibition will be determined by the very dynamics of their interaction.

The first exhibition, Spit-Polishing a Starless Sky, is made up of black or nearly-black paintings by Bhakti Baxter, Daniel Newman and Gavin Perry. In the work of all these painters, the black monochrome is entwined with references that belong in cultural spheres that exist far away from formalist concerns. In Baxter’s case, the black paintings double as images of macroscopic phenomena and have a scientific flavor. In Perry’s work, the black monochrome is literally the high-end side of paintings that also trade in lowbrow referents and objects, like cheap rugs and souped up cars. With Newman, the black glaze is all process. He has covered over 200 found paintings with black, turning a gesture characteristic of iconophobia into a delirious flow of production. In a sense, in the work of all these painters, two sets of information are already blended. Each of their works becomes a stand-in for the overall structure of a double-exhibition with incompatible or competing halves.

The second exhibition, Outer Space, titled after a 1999 short film by Peter Tscherkassky, will be made up of sculptural proposals by Nicolas Lobo and Giancarlo Sardone, and Ernesto Oroza and Gean Moreno. Each of these collaborative projects begins with elements provided by the technologies, conventions and infrastructure that form the invisible materiality of our social space. Working through all the engineering problems and ontological recoding that rendering a virtual artifact in actual space brings, Lobo has collaborated with terrazzo mason Sardone to produced a real-life double of a standard bench that can be found ready-made in the design program SketchUp. As the bench took shape, its proportions began to feel slightly off due to some distortion caused the Sketchup rendering engine. What looked like a perfectly bland bench on screen takes on an uncanny air in our physical space. Oroza and Moreno will use the tabloid, of the sort found throughout the city’s neighborhoods, to create both a “catalog” and an ornamental wallpaper pattern from forms determined by the exhibition itself that will, in turn, activate the supposed neutral walls of the space.

All the artists in the exhibition are part of Miami’s burgeoning scene. They have all exhibited their work internationally and are represented in the collections of major museums. This will be the first time their work is shown at Charest-Weinberg Gallery, whose reputation continues to grow as Miami’s premier venue for emerging art.

Ficciones postmodernas en Miami
Domingo, 09.27.09
By ADRIANA HERRERA
Especial/El Nuevo Herald
Charest-Weinberg Gallery es un espacio artístico abierto al riesgo inteligente, a exploraciones tan inusuales en su método como coherentes. Prueba de ello es el montaje de dos muestras paralelas curadas por Gean Moreno y yuxtapuestas en la exhibición Spit-Polishing a Starless Sky/Outer Space. El hecho de que ninguna de las piezas esté identificada --pese a que algunas poseen títulos-- obedece a la naturaleza de un proyecto que fusiona la autoría individual y la anónima o colectiva, y también lo decorativo y lo documental; la reproducción virtual y la mecánica; y las estrategias propias del diseño o de la literatura, con el arte. Al explorar en el espacio las intersecciones de las piezas de Daniel Newman, Bhakti Baxter y Gavin Perry --que conforman la primera exhibición, Spit-Polishing a Starless Sky-- con las de Gean Moreno, Ernesto Oroza, y Nicolás Lobo -que conforman la segunda, Outer Space-- se logra una gran instalación colectiva, que rebasa los límites conceptuales claves.
El catálogo de esta exhibición doble, apilado a la izquierda de la entrada de la galería, evoca las imágenes que Félix González-Torres imprimió en papel periódico, alterando la relación entre las obras y el espectador. Pero aquí estamos ante otras implicaciones. Al desdoblar el catálogo descubrimos dos hojas impresas en tabloide que documentan cada muestra. La pila está colocada sobre una pieza instalada en el suelo y justamente hecha con seis copias extendidas del diagrama de dos cuadrados y un rectángulo duplicados que Oroza y Moreno obtuvieron de la impresión en prensa del oscuro ``reverso'' de las obras de Baxter, Newman y Perry que conforman Spit-Polishing a Starless Sky. Estas alcanzan a distinguirse por la otra cara de la hoja, aunque son pinturas ``negras'', casi monocromáticas. La pintura de Newman forma parte de una serie de cuadros encontrados que ``canceló'' cubriéndolas casi por completo de negro ``en un gesto característico de icono-fobia'', según Moreno. La bella pieza colgante de Perry está hecha sobre una alfombra rectangular común, a la que recubrió de negro. Light Tunnel de Baxter es un foco luminiscente rodeado de ``un cielo sin estrellas'' --como el título--, construido con trazos circulares negros, que indagan en formas reveladas por la ciencia.
En la segunda hoja del catálogo aparece por una cara del periódico el segundo diagrama de Oroza y Moreno: lo tomaron de una documentación sobre diseños populares realizada en Little Haiti, en Miami: era la fachada de una casa decorada con una simulación de piedras en la calle 79. Al reproducir la imagen a tamaño tabloide en papel se convierte en un patrón geométrico que puede multiplicarse y que usan como matriz de trabajo para producir inquietantes intersecciones. El cruce de diseños traspasado al arte, por ejemplo. Tampoco es azar que en el anverso de esta hoja aparezcan el supuesto prólogo del editor a la última novela de E.T.A. Hoffmann, y el modelo del banco que Nicolás Lobo construyó con Giancarlo Sardone tras tomarlo, como un objeto encontrado, del programa, de Google Earth, que se usa para hacer modelos virtuales arquitectónicos y para otros usos en la red, pero no para construir objetos reales.
Junto al traspaso de ese modelo virtual a un medio mecánico como el papel impreso (y a su real existencia en el espacio interior en la galería), el espectador ve, justo en frente del catálogo apilado, que con la hoja de periódico del patrón de piedras se ha empapelado por completo la pared del fondo y media pared lateral, y que el efecto de la multiplicación es asombroso: esa imagen que documentaba una intervención de decoración popular, funciona ahora como un bello papel de colgadura que duplica su efecto, además, en el espejo de una de las puertas de la galería. Pero no sólo eso: en uno de los lados de la pared empapelada está colgado el Túnel de luz de Baxter, y la impresión es que el diagrama y la pintura forman una sola obra continua. Esa fusión es tan perfecta como transgresora: la instalación sofistica el diseño espontáneo anónimo hasta usarlo como una perfecta decoración de interiores, pero también hace de la piedra papel, vuelve el objeto frágil y perecedero, del mismo modo en que disuelve la noción de autoría. Ese hilo de continuidad que tiene como base los mecanismos de reproducción y la apropiación de diseños prefabricados tanto como la incorporación de piezas que exploran otros modos de cancelación de límites se prolonga en el texto del catálogo. Hoffman, juez de oficio, pero también ilustrador, tenor y autor romántico de los Cuentos fantásticos que encandilaron a Offenbach, quien los llevó a la ópera, compuso en 1919 su extraña novela The Life and Opinions of the Tomcat Murr. Como explica el lúdico prólogo se trata de la autobiografía de un gato, que por descuido editorial, salió impreso sin notar que incorporaba las pilas de hojas de otro libro sobre un compositor, con las cuales el gato Murr jugaba. El ``editor'' pide disculpas por las yuxtaposiciones --paralelas a los ``descuidos'' de estas dos muestras fusionadas en los que una obra se incorpora a otra sin que nadie se tome el cuidado de colocar los créditos de identificación precisos--, así como por los juegos de sentido que resultan de determinados errores tipográficos. El texto habla directamente al lector, pidiendo su ``discreción'' y es auto-reflexivo en torno al proceso editorial, con una humorística ironía que permite introducirse en su estructura impredecible (por su naturaleza felina), y discontinua que la convierte en ``una de las primeras ficciones posmodernas''. Resulta semejante en sus osadas mezclas de autores a esta exhibición que funde las pinturas en negro de una muestra, con los desbordamientos de espacios y de usos insólitos de la reproducción de la otra. El juego referencial del catálogo es interminable: Hoffmann se apropiaba, ya desde el título, de la cervantina novela de Lawrence Sterne, The Life and Opinions of Tristam Shandy, que contiene ese mismo libro dentro del libro, asteriscos en vez de ciertas palabras, una página totalmente negra, y la virtud compartida con esta exhibición --tan pulcra en su instalación minimalista que pasaría por decorativa-- de expandir los límites mentales. •
adrianaherrerat@aol.com
`Spit-Polishing a Starless Sky/Outer Space' de Daniel Newman, Bhakti Baxter, Gavin Perry, Gean Moreno, Ernesto Oroza, y Nicolás Lobo en Charest-Weinberg Gallery, 250 NW 23 St., Space 408. Hasta el 5 de octubre.

Gean Moreno and Ernesto Oroza. Miami-Dade Public Library System - Main Library, Miami. June 10, 2010.

{besps}driftwood{/besps}
{besps_c}0|a driftwood-moreno-oroza-2010.jpg|Gean Moreno and Ernesto Oroza. 2010.|Installation{/besps_c}
{besps_c}0|b driftwood-moreno-oroza-2010.jpg|Gean Moreno and Ernesto Oroza. 2010.|Installation{/besps_c}
{besps_c}0|c driftwood-moreno-oroza-2010.jpg|Gean Moreno and Ernesto Oroza. 2010.|Tabloid #9{/besps_c}
{besps_c}0|d driftwood-moreno-oroza-2010.jpg|Gean Moreno and Ernesto Oroza. 2010.|Installation{/besps_c}
{besps_c}0|e driftwood-moreno-oroza-2010.jpg|Gean Moreno and Ernesto Oroza. Untitled, 2010.|Collection of found refrigerator trays{/besps_c}
{besps_c}0|e1-driftwood-moreno-oroza-2010.jpg|Gean Moreno and Ernesto Oroza. Untitled, 2010.|Found refrigerator tray{/besps_c}
{besps_c}0|e2 driftwood-glass.jpg|Gean Moreno and Ernesto Oroza. Untitled, 2010.|Found refrigerator tray{/besps_c}
{besps_c}0|e3 driftwood-glass2.jpg|Gean Moreno and Ernesto Oroza. Untitled, 2010.|Found refrigerator tray{/besps_c}
{besps_c}0|e4 driftwood-glass3.jpg|Gean Moreno and Ernesto Oroza. Untitled, 2010.|Found refrigerator tray{/besps_c}
{besps_c}0|e5 driftwood-glass4.jpg|Gean Moreno and Ernesto Oroza. Untitled, 2010.|Found refrigerator tray{/besps_c}
{besps_c}0|e6 driftwood-glass5.jpg|Gean Moreno and Ernesto Oroza. Untitled, 2010.|Found refrigerator tray{/besps_c}
{besps_c}0|f driftwood-moreno-oroza-2010.jpg|Gean Moreno and Ernesto Oroza. Untitled, 2010.|Lamp{/besps_c}
{besps_c}0|g driftwood-moreno-oroza-2010.jpg|Gean Moreno and Ernesto Oroza. 2010.|Poster announcing exhibition produced as insert in Tabloid #8, newsprint{/besps_c}

Curatorial Statement:
Driftwood - Gean Moreno and Ernesto Oroza
Thursday, June 10, 2010
Miami-Dade Public Library System - Main Library
101 West Flagler Street  Miami, FL 33130

Gean Moreno and Ernesto Oroza’s collaborative works question, test and “act out” ideas about the function of and tensions between objects, cities, exhibition spaces, art, architecture and design. Often visually simple and sparse, their projects for exhibition spaces have many layers.

These projects challenge the premise of design and artistic production, complicating our understanding of the relationships between makers and users. How do cultural influences, economic necessity, or any number of social, natural or political forces lead to new and unanticipated uses of places and things? What can we learn from the way ordinary people make use of milk crates, stereo speakers, buckets? What do we understand about changes in a city by looking at its salvage yards and civic auditoriums? Who or what makes a particular use or design official?

The artists write about these observations and publish them in newsprint tabloids that they distribute publicly as well as in art journals for specialized audiences. The ideas in these texts inform their visual/design projects; the tabloids become part of installations. These ideas also trouble the connections between the materials in the gallery or art journal—validating spaces—and their counterparts in the city and society outside.

The objects and materials in Driftwood act as double (or triple, or quadruple) agents. The wallpaper, screen structures, event posters and glass “paintings” extend or bend the energies at work in a Miami salvage yard and urban patterns of use: they are both art objects and salvaged/functional materials. They also modify the space, laying bare its functions: an institution has decided to use a space designed to be an auditorium or meeting space as an art gallery.

The patterned wallpaper is also a vehicle for discussing ideas. It folds into a tabloid containing an essay with images, Thirteen Ways to Look at a Salvage Yard, and a page that collapses into yet another publication, Freddy: examining the process by which a mass-produced object gets “derailed” for new uses. You’re invited to pick these up and take them with you—to read or to use for something else.

Denise Delgado.
Curator.Art Services and Exhibitions
Miami-Dade Public Library System

La Otra, arte contemporáneo
21 al 26 de octubre 2011
Inauguración: Viernes, 21 de octubre, 8 PM
Horario General: Sábado 22 al Miércoles 26 de octubre, 11 AM - 8 PM
Domingo 23 de octubre, 11 AM - 6 PM
Evento de cierre: Miércoles 26 de octubre, 8 PM - 2 AM
Dirección: Edificio Panauto, Avenida Caracas con Calle 26, esquina sur oriental (parqueadero privado)
www.laotraproyectos.com

Artist of the Month of October 2010
October Curator: Rene Morales
INVISIBLE-EXPORTS
The Bridge Downtown interview here

The Bridge Downtown
Posted on October 10, 2010 by theartistofthemonthclub

Selected by Rene Morales, Associate Curator at the Miami Art Museum, October’s Artists of the Month are Gean Moreno and Ernesto Oroza. Here, we talk about their six-tabloid digital print edition.

Q: What is the stone structure at the center of the image?

A: The stone structure is an artificial grotto that we found in a landscape nursery. We are using it as a stand-in for what we are calling the pre-city. This pre-city is a kind of abstract plane made up of recurring shapes and materials and colors, filtered through sedimented accumulation of zoning and building codes, that determine what the city will look like. We think it’s there in the repeating vegetation and garden ornaments in plant nurseries, in the prefabricated trusses in the roofing company, in the standard metrics according to which everything is cut in the building materials depot. It’s as if all the different shapes that will make up the city find in these objects their elementary particles. All that we need is to put the individual parts together and we end up with a city like Miami.

Bienvenidos a Miami

Q: The pre-city comes to exist through a filter of regulation, but what about demand and necessity?  Could that be as essential as regulation to the accumulation of a city?

A: The city, as a generic structure, happens at the interface between different forces. One of these is represented by regulation, legal precedent, climatological and other adaptations, and the habits of the citizenry. Another force is embodied in the myriad forms and metrics of what we call the pre-city. And yet another is taste/demand. We think of taste not in relation to some endowment to recognize or enjoy the “good things” in life, but as the manifestation of the systematic demands of a particular social group. These different forces are often interdependent, but it is at the points where they meet head-on that the city’s morphologies emerges.

Butt Johnson, Starchitects, 2009-10

Q: How does it relate to the format of 6 Tabloids?

A: If the pre-city opens a parenthesis, there is a post-city that closes it. Between them, however, there is only an absence where the traditional city once unfolded. We think of places like the salvage yard and the souvenir shop as part of this post-city. It’s not so much where waste goes as were things are deposited which index a change of fashion or building codes, an error in production, or an over-distillation of meaning. These places are almost like large sedimented scabs.

Q: Okay, so you are saying that the junk – souvenirs and waste are junk, just in different ways – becomes an index of expired tastes and needs?  That what we either discard as trash or commemorate as kitsch (like snowglobes and miniature Eiffel Towers) could tell an outsider about a city’s consumption patterns?  Or do you mean something different than that?

Wish You Were Here?

A: Well, within the examples we gave there are certain differences. Although we consider both part of what we are calling a post-city, the salvage yard and the souvenir shop behave in different ways. An important distinction we want to make is between the landfill and the salvage yard–or amorphous junk and the kind of diagrammatic reading that the salvage yard affords us. In the salvage yard one can discern a number of legal, technological, and social changes. A proliferation of doors, for instance, may index a change in building codes. There is also in the way that the salvage yard functions as a commercial entity this process of evacuating cultural value from artifacts, so that they again return to a condition of raw material. One can image the endless rows of pink and pastel blue toilets in the salvage yard morphing into the terrassae that fills in the mosaics in the children’s museum. Garbage, on the other hand, seems to take on its own hard symbolic qualities.

The souvenir shop is different. On the one hand, it participates in the post-city as a kind of trader in dead meanings. It portrays, on the surface, the city not as a lively generative matrix of forces, but as a symbolic construct. It employs widely-shared conventions. Yet, on the other hand, the souvenir, as part of a massive productive system, in the challenges it puts to our safeguarding of stable identity, seems more up-to-date than most objects. It understands generic production. It treats identity as something that is “stamped” on a set of generic artifacts. It invites us to consider a new notion of city-identity, one that is perhaps is more attuned to our global trading networks, our massive communicative infrastructures, and the proliferation of generic production. While it houses obsolete symbols, it seems ahead of most things in its understanding of contemporary production. In this way, it closes the loop: it is both part of the post-city in its tired semiotic inventory, and it is part or emblematic of the pre-city in the understanding of morphologies and processes of the generic.

Q: That’s a fascinating concept, that the souvenir can be a lingering signifier of a city, while it also can be a building block for the inchoate pre-city.  Today’s gift shop is tomorrow’s salvage yard. Given your interest in trading, communication, and production at the global level, why do you take on the “the City” as your subject?

A: But there is no difference between the city and the global networks of trading, communication and production. Or another way to say this: cities are just points of compression in these networks.

TABLOID BY GEAN MORENO & ERNESTO OROZA http://thetabloid.org/
Miami based artists Gean Moreno and Ernesto Oroza have created a designfocused tabloid in honor of Design Miami/ 2010, featuring interviews, sketches, posters and essays by important forces in the design world such as Andrea Branzi, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Martí Guixé and Jerszy Seymour. To go along with the free publication, which will be distributed at the fair as well as key points throughout the city, Moreno and Oroza have designed a limited run of bags and t-shirts that reinterpret the Design Miami’s trademark logo. (from Design Miami 2010 program)
Contributors: El Ultimo Grito, David Enon, Kueng Caputo, Catherine Geel, Martí Guixé, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Octavi Rofes, Jerszy Seymour, Jens Thiel
Download pdf

THIRTEEN WAYS TO LOOK AT A LANDSCAPE NURSERY

Edition 16 of Tabloid will be released on November 13, 2010 during Second Saturday.
Tabloid is a publication that is designed and edited by Gean Moreno and Ernesto Oroza; content includes interviews, an artist ‘zine, and poetry. Pick up your copy at Gallery Diet.

PRE-CITY
Gean Moreno and Ernesto Oroza
Gallery Diet 174 NW 23 St Miami, Fl, 33127
October 9, 2010 7 - 10 pm

NEW WORK MIAMI 2010
July 18 through October 17, 2010

Driftwood - Gean Moreno and Ernesto Oroza
Thursday, June 10, 2010
Miami-Dade Public Library System - Main Library
101 West Flagler Street  Miami, FL 33130

Gean Moreno and Ernesto Oroza’s collaborative works question, test and “act out” ideas about the function of and tensions between objects, cities, exhibition spaces, art, architecture and design. Often visually simple and sparse, their projects for exhibition spaces have many layers...

DECOY by Gean Moreno and Ernesto Oroza
FARSIDE GALLERY press release -- invitation
On View May 6-June 6, 2010
Opening Reception: Friday, May 7
see review

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

(Miami, FL) -For the exhibition Decoy, Ernesto Oroza and Gean Moreno are producing an abstracted interior in the guise of a reading room...

Upcoming: Catastrophe ? Quelle Catastrophe ? - Manif d’art – The Québec City Biennial
Curator: Sylvie Fortin

www.manifdart.org

PROYECTO HABITAR

Spanish Cultural Center Montevideo.
Curated by Luisa Espino
February 10th - April 10th 2010

TIME + TEMP: Surveying the Shifting Climate of Painting in South Florida [More info here]
Nov. 16, 2009 – Jan. 10, 2010
Opening Reception: Fri., Nov. 20, 6-9 pm
Art and Culture Center of Hollywood
1650 Harrison St.
Hollywood, FL 33020
954. 921. 3274

TIME + TEMP: Surveying the Shifting Climate of Painting in South Florida

CCE Miami presents Proyecto Habitar
From Oct 16th through Nov 25th, 2009
Raúl Cárdenas / Torolab. White Noise. 2001. Still
Opening reception: Friday, October 16th, 2009. 8:00 p.m.
Location: Centro Cultural Español. 800 Douglas Road, Suite 170. Coral Gables, FL 33134
Dates: From October 16th through Nov 25th, 2009
Curator: Luisa Espino

Since the sixties, cities have changed at a dramatic pace. This has been due in large part to real estate and financial interests, disconnected from collective needs. This deep restructuring has affected both demography and socio-economic configurations. The quality of life within each growing sector of the population has been compromised.

At the end of the Twentieth Century, while some neighborhoods deteriorated, others regenerated socially via occupation by the upper class and so generating a rapid rise in the economic value. Every year, more and more people are displaced from their homes because of abandonment of neighborhoods, land expropriation and re-zoning, rate rises and costs that outstrip salaries. The constant pressures of urban decay, land speculation, the establishment of ghettos, the influx of international migrants or the homeless from neighboring regions makes as essential review of our ideas of habitability.

A group of artists has rallied against these situations, fostering a counter culture where contemporary city decadence is approached from different angles. They challenge housing problems, the use of public space, land speculation, urban settlements on the fringe of legality, enforced desertion of neighborhoods and buildings, urban decay and the formation of ghettos. They demand a new approach to homelessness.

Individual and collective artists such as Raúl Cárdenas/Torolab, Santiago Cirugeda/Recetas Urbanas, Democracia, Gean Moreno, Ernesto Oroza, Juan Carlos Robles and Todo por la Praxis, illustrate the following cases in Madrid, Seville, Miami, Tijuana and Havana.

En un momento en el que las grandes ciudades de los países desarrollados compiten entre sí por convertirse en iconos de modernidad y sus autoridades invitan a conocidos arquitectos a diseñar edificios emblemáticos, está teniendo lugar en paralelo una Arquitectura de la Necesidad o de Emergencia en manos de personas que no detentan grandes estudios de arquitectura, pero a los que las circustancias les han llevado a convertirse en improvisados arquitectos.

Esta exposición reúne varios ejemplos que, aunque distintos y geográficamente lejanos, tienen como denominador común dar visibilidad a construcciones llevadas a cabo por sus propios habitantes, a menudo de manera caótica, en contextos en los que la realidad social ha relegado a un segundo plano la organización reglada que dicta el urbanismo. Situaciones y procesos, en la mayoría de los casos espontáneos, que con el paso del tiempo han dado lugar a verdaderas tipologías en sectores que carecen de servicios sociales y de abastecimiento básicos.

Los artistas y colectivos Raúl Cárdenas/Torolab, Santiago Cirugeda/Recetas Urbanas, Democracia, Gean Moreno, Ernesto Oroza, Juan Carlos Robles y Todo por la Praxis, han dado imagen a algunos casos de Madrid, Sevilla, Miami, Tijuana y La Habana.

Activities at the Cultural Center of Spain are sponsored by the Spanish Agency of International Cooperation to the Development (AECID), Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs and Cultural Affairs Council, the Miami-Dade County Mayor and Board of County Commissioners.

Schedule is subject to changes. All activities have limited seating. For more information, please visit www.ccemiami.org
Centro Cultural Español
800 Douglas Road. Suite 170
Coral Gables, FL 33134
Ph: 305.448.9677

{slimbox single images/stories/showcwg1.jpg,images/stories/showcwg1.jpg,Spit-Polishing a Starless Sky/Outer Space; images/stories/showcwg2.jpg,images/stories/showcwg2.jpg,Spit-Polishing a Starless Sky/Outer Space; images/stories/showcwg5.jpg,images/stories/showcwg5.jpg, Spit-Polishing a Starless Sky/Outer Space; images/stories/showcwg4.jpg,images/stories/showcwg4.jpg,Spit-Polishing a Starless Sky/Outer Space; images/stories/showcwg6.jpg,images/stories/showcwg6.jpg,Spit-Polishing a Starless Sky/Outer Space; images/stories/showcwg7.jpg,images/stories/showcwg7.jpg,Spit-Polishing a Starless Sky/Outer Space}

Bhakti Baxter, Nicolas Lobo, Gean Moreno, Daniel Newman, Ernesto Oroza, and Gavin Perry will be featured in the exhibition, Spit-Polishing a Starless Sky/Outer Space, at Charest-Weinberg Gallery, from September 12 through October 5, 2009. The opening reception will be on September 12 from 6pm to 9 pm at 250 NW 23rd Street, Space 408, Miami, FL 33127.

The exhibition is comprised of two different exhibitions that have been superimposed without any attempt to make them cohere. Two sets of information have simply been brought together, and the resulting form of the exhibition will be determined by the very dynamics of their interaction.

The first exhibition, Spit-Polishing a Starless Sky, is made up of black or nearly-black paintings by Bhakti Baxter, Daniel Newman and Gavin Perry. In the work of all these painters, the black monochrome is entwined with references that belong in cultural spheres that exist far away from formalist concerns. In Baxter’s case, the black paintings double as images of macroscopic phenomena and have a scientific flavor. In Perry’s work, the black monochrome is literally the high-end side of paintings that also trade in lowbrow referents and objects, like cheap rugs and souped up cars. With Newman, the black glaze is all process. He has covered over 200 found paintings with black, turning a gesture characteristic of iconophobia into a delirious flow of production. In a sense, in the work of all these painters, two sets of information are already blended. Each of their works becomes a stand-in for the overall structure of a double-exhibition with incompatible or competing halves.

The second exhibition, Outer Space, titled after a 1999 short film by Peter Tscherkassky, will be made up of sculptural proposals by Nicolas Lobo and Giancarlo Sardone, and Ernesto Oroza and Gean Moreno. Each of these collaborative projects begins with elements provided by the technologies, conventions and infrastructure that form the invisible materiality of our social space. Working through all the engineering problems and ontological recoding that rendering a virtual artifact in actual space brings, Lobo has collaborated with terrazzo mason Sardone to produced a real-life double of a standard bench that can be found ready-made in the design program SketchUp. As the bench took shape, its proportions began to feel slightly off due to some distortion caused the Sketchup rendering engine. What looked like a perfectly bland bench on screen takes on an uncanny air in our physical space. Oroza and Moreno will use the tabloid, of the sort found throughout the city’s neighborhoods, to create both a “catalog” and an ornamental wallpaper pattern from forms determined by the exhibition itself that will, in turn, activate the supposed neutral walls of the space.

All the artists in the exhibition are part of Miami’s burgeoning scene. They have all exhibited their work internationally and are represented in the collections of major museums. This will be the first time their work is shown at Charest-Weinberg Gallery, whose reputation continues to grow as Miami’s premier venue for emerging art.