Pepón Osorio, best
known for large-scale installations, was born in Santurce, Puerto
Rico, in 1955. He was educated at the Universidad Inter-Americana
in Puerto Rico and Herbert H. Lehman College in New York, and received
an MA from Columbia University in 1985. Osorio’s pieces, influenced
by his experience as a social worker in The Bronx, usually evolve
from an interaction with the neighborhoods and people among which
he is working. “My principal commitment as an artist is to
return art to the community,” he says. A recent example is
“Tina’s House,” a project created in collaboration
with a family recovering from a devastating fire. The house—a
tabletop-size art piece—tells the story of the night of the
fire and those affected, and is traveling the country in a series
of “home visits.” A home visit invites a new family to
live with the art work for a period of at least one week, allowing
the story of “Tina’s House” to be
told in many homes and environments. His work has been shown at
the Whitney Museum of American Art and El Museo del Barrio in New
York, the Smithsonian Museum of American Art in Washington, D.C.,
and el Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico and El Museo de Arte Contemporáneo
de Puerto Rico. Pepón Osorio lives in Philadelphia.
For additional biographic & bibliographic information:
Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, New York |
