Installation view, Eamon Ore-Giron: Competing With Lightning/Rivalizando con el Relámpago, Museum of Contemporary Art, Denver, February 16 to May 22, 2022. Photo by Wes Magyar.
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ABOUT THE EXHIBITION
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Exploring the complex layering of identities, histories, and artistic legacies that have influenced Eamon Ore-Giron’s approach to painting, Eamon Ore-Giron: Competing with Lightning / Rivalizando con el relámpago at MCA Denver marks the first presentation to examine the artist’s trajectory over more than 20 years of creative practice.
On view February 16 to May 22, 2022, the exhibition follows the progression of Ore-Giron’s paintings since 2002 with an emphasis on recent works in abstraction that place this painting tradition within a broader and more complicated history of form in the Americas. Featuring more than two dozen works, most of which have not been seen publicly before now, Eamon Ore-Giron: Competing with Lightning / Rivalizando con el relámpago culminates with an immersive presentation of six new paintings from the artist’s Infinite Regress series created specifically for the exhibition.
These stunning large-scale paintings rendered with metallic gold on raw linen draw upon an international discourse of geometric abstraction that spans centuries, incorporating references that range from ancient Andean architecture to twentieth century modernism.
“Eamon Ore-Giron is a groundbreaking artist who challenges the rigidity of boundaries to catalyze new ways of seeing and understanding,” said Nora Burnett Abrams, Mark G. Falcone Director of MCA Denver. “It is an honor to be the first museum to showcase different chapters of this artist’s incredible practice, embodying Eamon’s creative risk-taking and MCA Denver’s commitment to pushing the cultural conversation in new directions.”
“The emergence of abstraction in the U.S. has largely been understood as deriving from twentieth-century modernism and related movements such as Abstract Expressionism,” said Miranda Lash, Ellen Bruss Senior Curator of MCA Denver. “Eamon challenges this narrative with references to modernist elements alongside pre-Columbian sources and contemporary indigenous culture that recontextualizes abstraction within a more expansive tradition of artistic creativity in the Americas.”
As an artist, musician, and DJ, Eamon Ore-Giron examines the personal and historical ramifications of cultural hybridity. Raised in Tucson, Arizona, he is inspired by his roots in the American Southwest, his visits to his father’s hometown of Huancayo, Peru, and his time spent as a practicing artist in California and Mexico.
Additionally, Ore-Giron is creating a new, site-specific mural in MCA Denver’s second-floor Vicki and Kent Logan Promenade Space. The exhibition will also include an artist-curated, tapestry lined, sound installation featuring music-based work by Ore-Giron, including seminal tracks he created as DJ Lengua, and hand-woven tapestries from his Talking Shit series.
Curated by
Miranda Lash, Ellen Bruss Senior Curator at the MCA Denver
Miranda Lash, Ellen Bruss Senior Curator at the MCA Denver
On view from
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This exhibition is generously supported by The Fries Foundation and the Stapleton/Harmes C. Fishback Foundation. MCA Denver also thanks the Contemporary Circles Young-ish Circle Members and the citizens of the Scientific and Cultural Facilities District for their support of the exhibition.
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About the artist
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Eamon Ore-Giron (b. 1973, Tucson, USA) blends a wide-range of visual styles and influences in his brightly colored abstract geometric paintings. Referencing indigenous and craft traditions as well as 20th-century avant-gardes, his paintings move between temporalities and resonate across cultural contexts. Ore-Giron also works in video and music, and his interdisciplinary projects explore the interrelationship of sound, color, rhythm, and pattern, and make manifest a history of transnational exchange. He has exhibited nationally and internationally, as a solo practitioner and as part of collaborative endeavors, and has been selected to realize major public commissions in New York and Los Angeles. Ore-Giron received a BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute and an MFA from the University of California, Los Angeles.
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Hear Miranda Lash, MCA Denver Ellen Bruss Senior Curator, explain why and how the exhibitions on view were selected to be shown together
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ENGLISH
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Transcript:
My name is Miranda Lash, I am the Ellen Bruss Senior Curator at MCA Denver. The advantage of having these two exhibitions on view at the same time, Eamon Ore-Giron: Competing with Lightning / Rivalizando con el relámpago and Dyani White Hawk: Speaking to Relatives is that together they put forward a compelling and powerful argument about the history of abstraction in the Americas.
Both are geometric painters, drawing from Indigenous sources and histories of abstraction in architecture and garments and design going back from millennia. Looking at their work together in this building, during the spring, we can come to a deeper understanding of how abstraction has evolved in the Americas and how it is a phenomenon that extends back millennia and not as traditionally described as a phenomenon invented in the 20th century.
Through looking at these paintings, we can examine geometries in a different way, think about how abstraction has evolved, and also think about how we can discuss painting and its discourse differently.
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ESPAÑOL
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Transcripción:
Mi nombre es Miranda Lash. Soy la Curadora Ellen Bruss del Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Denver. La ventaja de tener estas dos exposiciones disponibles al mismo tiempo, Eamon Ore-Giron: Rivalizando con el relámpago y Dyani White Hawk: Hablándole a familiares, es que juntas nos ofrecen una cautivador y poderoso argumento sobre la abstracción en el continente americano.
Son un pintor y una pintora que toman inspiración de fuentes indígenas y de historias de la abstracción en la arquitectura y vestimentas y diseños que datan de milenios atrás. Viendo su trabajo frente a frente en este edificio durante la primavera, podemos llegar a un entendimiento más profundo de cómo la abstracción evolucionò en el continente americano y cómo es un fenómeno que data de milenios atrás.
Y no como es tradicionalmente descrito como un fenómeno inventado en el siglo veinte. Al ver estas pinturas, podemos examinar geometrías de una manera distinta. Pensemos cómo ha evolucionado la abstracción y también cómo podemos discutir la pintura y su discurso de manera distinta.
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