The MAC Shop's

BOOK OF THE MONTH

In this new feature, we spotlight one publication available in The MAC Shop.

Our July 2009 Book of the Month selection is the exhibition catalog of a 1998 exhibition shown here at The MAC and at Museo Jacobo Borges, Caracas, titled:

"Dallas?...?Caracas?"

Jaume Plensa: Dallas?…Caracas? April 15 – May 31, 1998

Exploring the theme of the United States as a “melting pot” and emphasizing the commonality of food stuffs among all countries of the world, this installation included a giant aluminum cooking pot, 200 panoramic photographs of kitchens in Dallas and Caracas and thirty-eight white paraffin doors. This exhibition was the first museum exhibition of Jaume Plensa’s work in the United States and was curated by William Jeffett, Ph.D. The exhibition later traveled to Fundació Museo Jacobo Borges in Caracas, Venezuela.

http://www.jaumeplensa.com/



Dallas? ...Caracas? ...

by Plensa, Jaume; Jeffett, William (Curator)

Publisher: Dallas, The MAC, McKinney Avenue Contemporary, 1998

The exhibition catalog of the works of Spanish sculptor Jaume Plensa, including photographs of private kitchens (in Dallas and Caracas) and kitchen accessories as examples of modern sculpture that illustrate the cultural commonalties and differences between the two cities. The exhibitions took place on April 15 to May 31 in Dallas and at the Museo Jacobo Borges in Caracas from July 5 to September 6, 1998.

159 pages.

The catalog is a dual language text, in both English and Spanish.

Foreword

Museo Jacobo Borges

Dallas?...Caracas? evidences one of the most outstanding profiles of contemporary creation. In a direct manner, art is displacing its interest toward both our physical and social bodies. Such a displacement is a reaction to the formalist reiteration that has circumscribed artistic language to a mere auto-referential condition, a circumstance that has generated the rediscovery of those spaces in which our basic needs occur: sleeping , loving and, fundamentally , eating. Jaume Plensa, although being a sculptor and, hence, a creator of objects, incarnates a new generation of artists who do not conform themselves with the traditions aesthetic contemplation. This exhibition introduces this new perspective of art as a corpus of ideas open to a polyhedric debate originated in the cultural disciplines and those of the social sciences….