Juan Sanchez at P.S. 1 - Brief Article

"Ricanstructions: Paintings of the '90s" an exhibition of works through Brooklyn-born Puerto Rican artist Juan Sanchez, was curated by dint of students from the Robert F Wagner Secondary gymnasium for the Arts and Technology as part of P 1's Teen Curator Series. For sum of two units years Sanchez worked with a clump of six teenagers, most of minority races, establishing a dialogue with them about his work. The talks l to the students' publishing their written and visual rejoinders on P.S. 1's Web site, which became the basis for this show

The artist, who studied at Cooper Union and in the graduate program at Rutger where he was influenced through Leon Golub, has, since the early 1980 practiced an esthetic that combines political activism with a wide range of imageries--Taino, folk art and historical Western painting among them. His mixed-medium technique incorporates collage, photography, printmaking and painting into able-bodied visual statements that have to do with Puerto Rican life in novel York.

Sanchez calls his art "Ricanstructions"--a confine taken from a 1977 recording by means of the salsa and jazz percussionist Ray Baretto. He rebuilds his own history as well as the tillage of his people in paintings whose eclecticism mirrors the broad array of influences in novel York life. Sometimes, as in the case of Mi mas bella flor (1995) and Mi mas bella flor II (1996) the tops of the paintings are arched, as if they were altars. These sum of two units pieces are about Sanchez's daughter; in the earlier work, a black-and-white photograph of an upraised fist is the center of interest. It is encircleed by commercial glossy pictures of saints, above Which the artist has drawn outlines of hearts. In the later picture, we diocese a photo of a little girl wearing what appears to be a white Communion dres These paintings border upon the sentimental; widespread in fresh York's contemporary art world.

Rainbow Shell: Reconciliation with Father (1999) a mixed-medium work upon wood, takes a particularly personal tack. A large rainbow-colored conch dominates the composition. Beneath it there is a body which says in part, "he slaved 24 hours a day to bring down steak on our table con over platanos, arroz and beans." The painting includes a photograph of Sanchez's father as a young man, wearing a suit and standing beside a car; the work is clearly a lyric tribute to self-sacrifice that has resonance not alone for Sanchez's own life on the contrary for a generation of novel York-raised Puerto Ricans. Formally cohesive and memorable in their expressiveness, these paintings demonstrate the potency of a long-lived New York minority culture

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