Franco Mondini-Ruiz

Franco Mondini-Ruiz (born 1961) is an American artist who lives and works in San Antonio, Texas and New York, New York. He is of Mexican and Italian descent.[1] According to art critic Roberta Smith, his work "questions notions of preciousness and art-market exclusivity while delivering a fizzy visual pleasure".[2] Mondini-Ruiz takes a variety of approaches to creating art, working in installation, performance, painting, sculpture, and short stories.

Franco Mondini-Ruiz
Nationality United States
Known forInstallation art, Painting, Sculpture, Performance art
Notable workInfinito Botanica, Goya Gown, High Pink
AwardsRome Prize

He was a 2004 Artist-in-Residence at the McColl Center for Visual Art in Charlotte, NC.[3]

Infinito Botanica

One of Mondini-Ruiz's earliest major projects was his "Infinito Botanica," an installation that references the Mexican botánicas common in his hometown of San Antonio, Texas. In the mid-90s Mondini-Ruiz purchased a botánica on South Flores street in San Antonio that had been in operation since the 1930s. He used this space to create a hybrid installation / store, which he considered "part of a social and figurative sculpture that mixed traditional botánica fare with his own sculpture and installations, as well as with the contemporary work of local cutting-edge and outsider artists, locally made craft, folk art, cultural artifacts and junk." Mondini-Ruiz has created different site-specific versions of this project at the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College (1999), the Whitney Biennial (2000), and the Kemper Art Museum in St Louis (2001).[4]

Piñatas

Mondini-Ruiz has also created a series of piñata versions of famous works of modern and contemporary art. These piñatas have been exhibited at the Aljira, A Center for Contemporary Art in collaboration with the Newark Museum. The exhibition, titled "Mexican Museum of Modern Art" included piñata versions of works by Donald Judd, Piet Mondrian, Andy Warhol, Jeff Koons, and many other modern and contemporary artists.[5] A version of this series was also shown at Artpace in San Antonio, this time under the title "Modern Piñatas".[6]

High Pink

In 2005, Distributed Art Publishers published Franco Mondini-Ruiz's book "High Pink: Tex-Mex Fairy Tales." The book includes short stories from South Texas and photographs of Mondini-Ruiz's artwork.[7]

References
  1. "American Indian artists offer contrast of old and new at fall Heard exhibit - Phoenix Business Journal". Archived from the original on 2012-10-25.
  2. Smith, Roberta. "Art in Review; Franco Mondini-Ruiz." New York Times, December 30, 2005. "Art in Review; Franco Mondini-Ruiz - The New York Times".
  3. 20 years of Artists-In-Residence McColl Center
  4. Kushner, Marilyn. "Island Press Infinito Botanica: St. Louis, The Lavender Hour". Archived from the original on 2005-02-19.
  5. "Newark Museum". Archived from the original on 2011-07-27. Retrieved 2009-10-14.
  6. "Artpace: About the Exhibition". Archived from the original on 2010-05-24. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on May 24, 2011. Retrieved October 14, 2009.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link) CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
  7. See "Franco Mondini-Ruiz High Pink ARTBOOK | D.A.P. 2005 Catalog D.A.P./Distributed Art Books Exhibition Catalogues 9781933045122".

Further reading
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