Vision Revealed: Abelardo Morell

On May 11, 2006, The Patricia & Phillip Frost Art Museum at Florida International University launched its first traveling exhibition in Latin America. After several years of dedicated planning and with the generous support of title sponsor UBS, the Latin American tour of Vision Revealed: Selections from the work of Abelardo Morell debuted in São Paolo, Brazil in May and continued on to Santiago de Chile in July, 2006. In 2007 the exhibition will travel to Buenos Aires and Mexico, D.F. This ambitious project was conceived as part of the international celebration of the highly anticipated grand opening of the new Frost Art Museum.

Vision Revealed: Selections from the work of Abelardo Morell, curated by Elizabeth Cerejido, first opened at the Frost Art Museum in January 2004. The exhibition highlights several different series by this renowned Cuban-American artist, including the Camera Obscura body of work for which he is best known. Morell’s photographs have been exhibited and collected in major museums around the world including the Museum of Modern Art, NY; the Whitney Museum of American Art, NY; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY and the Art Institute of Chicago. Morell is the recipient of numerous prestigious awards including the Cintas and Guggenheim Fellowships.

Since the initial success of the exhibition, the Frost Art Museum has identified leading art institutions in Latin America who share our vision and passion for interpreting, preserving and presenting contemporary Latin American and American art. The Frost Art Museum staff has worked closely with leading members of the arts communities in each of the hosting cities to coordinate exquisitely chic VIP opening receptions. Attending these events alongside Latin America’s elite art connoisseurs, CEO’s and politicians will be featured artist Abelardo Morell, leading VIP’s from Miami including naming donors Patricia and Phillip Frost, as well as Frost Art Museum Curator, Elizabeth Cerejido.

The Frost Art Museum’s efforts to foster cultural, educational, and artistic exchanges complement Florida International University’s commitment to its ever-growing international audiences. This important exhibition lays the groundwork for the Museum’s goals to pursue future collaborative projects with international museums. By cultivating the transnational relationships that have been established through this project, the Frost Art Museum will be able to expand its presence abroad, as well as its offerings at home through unique initiatives in the arts.

Tour Stops

SÃO PAULO, BRAZIL Museu de Arte Moderna (MAM) (Museum of Modern Art) Parque do Ibirapuera, portao 3 – s/no, São Paulo, SP, Brazil www.mam.org.br May 11 – June 26, 2006

SANTIAGO, CHILE Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes Parque Forestal S/N, Casilla 3209 – Correo Central, Santiago, Chile www.dibam.cl/bellas_artes/ July 13 – September 7, 2006

MEXICO D.F., MEXICO Centro de la Imagen Plaza de la Ciudadela 2, Mexico, D.F. 06040 www.conaculta.gob.mx/cimagen June 14 – August 19, 2007

BUENOS AIRES, ARGENTINA El Centro Cultural recoleta Junin 1930 - Buenos Aires, Argentina www.centroculturalrecoleta.org September 2007 – November 2007

UBS – Title Sponsor UBS, one of the world's leading financial firms, is the title sponsor of the Latin American exhibition tour of Vision Revealed: Selections from the work of Abelardo Morell. UBS is the market leader in Swiss retail and commercial banking, internationally recognized as one of the world's foremost wealth management businesses, global investment banking and securities firm, and a leading asset manager. As a member of the global community, UBS strives to actively contribute to the communities within which they do business. The “raison d’être” behind their well-established corporate responsibility agenda is the recognition that their success depends not only on the skill and resources of their people and the relationships they foster with clients, but also on the health and prosperity of the communities they work in.

One of UBS’ major commitments to community has been in the arts. The company is internationally recognized for a premier corporate collection as well as the title sponsorship for the two leading contemporary art fairs in the world, Art Basel and Art Basel Miami Beach. Additionally, UBS has been active in the museum sector, including the prestigious title of founding corporate partner of London's Tate Modern. All these initiatives are major platforms for demonstrating UBS’ commitment to art, and have provided the company with invaluable international exposure.

Groundbreaking international ventures such as the Frost Art Museum’s Traveling Exhibition capture the nature and intention of UBS cultural sponsorships. As a direct result of the generosity, vision and commitment of UBS, the Frost Art Museum is able to pursue meaningful endeavors to foster cultural exchanges.

Curator’s Statement

Consistent throughout the work of Cuban-American photographer Abelardo Morell, lies an inherent trait, the artist’s keen ability (through the lens of his camera) to transform seemingly mundane objects from our everyday lives into works of art, worthy of introspection.

Within the confines of traditional photography, Morell creates pictures that are both familiar and surreal by distorting scale, cropping objects and juxtaposing images. The artist fuses unexpected fragments of outdoor elements with household objects to create images that challenge our adult perceptions of reality. Morell reflects, “the spiritual aspect of my work has more to do with the sense that things in the world can be perceived and accepted as being in some respect alive. I try to approach everything that I photograph with this sense of wide-eyed awe.”

Vision Revealed: Selections from the work of Abelardo Morell features the artist’s best known series, Camera Obscura, in which he literally turns a room into a dark chamber capturing, through long exposures, the images that appear inverted on the walls of the outside world. In addition to the Camera Obscura series, the exhibition focuses on other bodies of work, including, photographs of books – portrayed both as objects emphasizing their physical properties and as containers of content whose narrative may be carefully manipulated through simple photographic techniques. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, a series of photographs based on the classic illustrations by Sir John Tenniel, portrays Morell’s trenchant skill with the latter. Also on view, is the work Morell created as artist-in-resident at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston in the 1990’s. The face of a museum’s staff member is juxtaposed alongside the face of Rembrandt creating a portrait that plays with time and history in a work from a series of scenes that merge the old world with the contemporary.

Morell’s photographs have been exhibited and collected in major museums around the world including the Museum of Modern Art, NY; the Whitney Museum of American Art, NY; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY and the Art Institute of Chicago. Morell is the recipient of numerous prestigious awards including the Cintas and Guggenheim Fellowships. Curating this exhibition was a deeply rewarding experience and it was a privilege to work closely with the artist. It is with even greater pleasure that we now present this successful exhibition to the Latin American audience.

Elizabeth Cerejido Curator

Vision Revealed: Selections from the work of Abelardo Morell
Kurator: Elizabeth Cerejido

Stationen:
16.01.04 - 14.03.04 Frost Art Museum, Miami
11.05.06 - 26.06.06 Museu de Arte Moderna, São Paulo
13.07.06 - 07.09.06 Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Santiago de Chile
14.06.07 - 19.08.07 Centro de la Imagen, Mexico City
Sept 2007 – Nov 2007 Centro Cultural Recoleta, Buenos Aires