Bronx River Art Center is pleased to present
Pick Me Up, Put Me On
Curated by Jordan Horton
September 22 - October 28, 2023
Opening Reception: September 22nd 6-8pm
Artist Talk: October 28th 5pm
Pick Me Up, Put Me On is a visual conversation between Estelle Maisonett and Oscar Morel, two Bronx-born artists who exemplify the enduring resonance of collage through themes of community, identity, and place. Their works celebrate everyday scenery, familiar objects, and subjects deeply personal to the artists yet resonant with a broader shared experience that transcends borough bounds. While Maisonett and Morel work in different stylistic manners, the Bronx can be noted as a foundational inspiration origin. The community harbored there weaves its way through their artistic practice, manifesting as a common thread that binds their work together. Pick Me Up, Put Me On invites us to transcend boundaries, explore the intricate tapestry of community, and celebrate the many dimensions of home.
Please join us on Friday September 22nd for a wine and cheese reception from 6PM to 8PM.
Photo: Estelle Maisonett
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About the artists:
Oscar Morel
Born 1997, Bronx, New York
Lives and works in the Bronx, New York
Oscar Morel was born in the Bronx in 1997. Morel received his BA from DePauw University in 2019, focusing on Studio Art and Computer Science. He later received his MFA from Boston University in 2022. Using everyday materials collected from home and sourced from his local community, Morel is a figurative collage artist who offers glimpses into Afro-surreal storytelling. Morel reimagines personal experiences and creates self-agency by intentionally altering moments, amalgamating materials, and referencing art history to control the narrative of the community, its cultural richness, and systemic inequalities.
As a Dominican child of immigrants, Morel explores the loss of agency in one's history and the absorption of surroundings to adapt to unknown spaces. Morel builds upon its figurative properties, with abstraction in mind, manifesting themselves the longer it is observed. Fragments of the medium, iconographic textiles, shapes, and symbols begin to find meaning in their placement in the narrative. Morel's work expresses a deep need for a contextualized meaning in a world bombarded with absurd information without clarity.
Estelle Maisonett
Born 1991, Bronx, New York
Lives and works in Queens, New York
Estelle Maisonett is an interdisciplinary artist born and raised in the Bronx, New York. Her work is an investigation of how personal and socio-cultural relationships to objects and materials inform preconceived notions of identity. With a practice spanning photography, printmaking, sculpture, painting, and video, Maisonett’s life-size collages explore how fragments of cultures locally and abroad have historically composited Latinx identity.
Maisonett received her MFA in Painting and Printmaking at the Yale School of Art in 2023 and her BFA from SUNY Purchase College in 2013. She is an arts community worker and educator who has worked with the Parsons School of Design, NYU, New York City Housing Authority, Department of Education NYC Schools, Bronx Children’s Museum, and additional community spaces in New York City. She was a recipient of the Latinx AIR Fellowship at NYU (2023), Quinn Emanuel Residency (2023), the Barry Cohen Scholarship (2023), the Alice Kimball Travel Grant
Fellowship (2022), the NewWave Artist-in-Residence (2021), the Artist in the MarketPlace Fellow at the Bronx Museum of the Arts (2018), the BronxArtSpace Artist in Residence (2018). Estelle has exhibited at The Bronx Museum of Art, Chashama, Field Projects, Bronx Art Space, El Barrio ArtSpace at PS109, Latchkey, Longwood Art Gallery, The Andrew Freedman Home, Hostos College, and The School of Visual Arts, amongst others.
About the Curator
Jordan Horton
Born 1996, Newark, NJ
Lives and works in Newark, NJ
Jordan Horton is a curator and art historian deeply invested in working closely with living artists and institutional critique. Horton’s interests center on the internet as a geographical space with special considerations of sonic and digital aesthetics, virtual subculture spaces, and translations of internet-based communication systems into everyday life. Additionally, Jordan is interested in performance art, dance, and film.
Jordan received their MA in the History of Art at Williams College/ The Clark Art Institute in 2023 and a BA in Art History at DePauw University in 2019. During their time at Williams, Horton was a Mellon Curatorial Fellow at the Williams College Museum of Art. As a Fellow, they have curated exhibitions utilizing the permanent collection, such as Sweaty Concepts (2021) and Remixing the Hall (ongoing). They have also worked with living artists for shows such as Frantz Zéphirin: Selected Works( 2022), Beatriz Cortez: The Portals (2023), and Mirrored Interiors: Films by Cecilia Aldarondo (2023).
Community and accessibility lie at the center of Horton’s curatorial practice. Jordan sees curation as an act of care for the art, artists, and all who encounter it. Because of this, they believe additional exhibition programming and various forms of interpretation are critical for viewers to experience art to the fullest.
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