Issue-Oriented Art
December 2007
On a street lush with native trees, the hard-edged house of Carlos and Rosa de la Cruz sits slightly at odds with its Spanish-style neighbors. At once austere and at ease with its verdant Key Biscayne surroundings, the residence is perfect for what seems to be its main task: to provide an optimal viewing experience for an impressive collection of contemporary art. The de la Cruzes, who never shy away from complex cultural artifacts, have opted for an architectural gem that runs as little interference as possible on the demanding works inside. High ceilings, light-colored marble floors, clean lines, skylights—they’re all precisely calculated to provide the artwork with a proper architectural context.Visitors are greeted by four large Christopher Wool works that line the walls of the foyer. Although Wool’s elegant black-and-white abstracts seem simple, close inspection reveals that they maintain an ambivalent position in relation to painting. In fact, they haven’t been painted at all. Wool uses different methods of image-transfer and reproduction to produce wall-bound objects that take on the traits of paintings but are ultimately something a bit more complex. Aside from simulating paintings, Wool’s works are characterized by gestures that "cancel" them out—swirls of spray paint and thick bands of enamel that partially cover the images and patterns on the surface.
In the formal living room, there are three untitled works by Wade Guyton. These were created by printing the letter "X" repeatedly on an inkjet printer. Any errors that occured during the printing were left intact. Untouched by Guyton’s hand and using imperfectly repeating motifs, these paintings take as their theme the very conventions of painting but, like Wool’s, use none of the medium’s standard methods of production.
On another wall, a large diptych by Kelley Walker, "Black Star Press: Black Press, Black Star" (2005), shows two identical versions of a photographed scene from a Civil Rights protest. The images have been set on their side so that the viewer focuses as much on the emotionally charged content as on how they are constructed and understood. When Walker placed the news photograph that served as his source on the flatbed of the scanner in order to enlarge it, he first poured chocolate and milk on it. The final image, then, is covered with brown and white stains that mimic the appearance of color splashes on abstract paintings. Like Guyton, Walker is interested in how images and paintings always employ specific conventions, and how they may be constructed using the technologies and archives of our Information Age.
Borrowing images from mass media, employing technologies of reproduction in unexpected ways, complicating the very idea of what a painting is—most of the paintings in the de la Cruz collection function at the meeting-point of these issues. This is true not only for Wool, Guyton and Walker, but for the heavyweight painters: Sigmar Polke, Martin Kippenberger, Albert Oehlen, Peter Doig, Neo Rauch, Tal R, Jonathan Meese and Lucy McKenzie.
As one wanders around the house it becomes obvious that the de la Cruzes are interested in collecting artists in depth, in acquiring large projects or substantial bodies of work. This has meant traveling a great deal and reading all the time. "I don’t believe in love at first sight," says Rosa. "I believe in doing homework." That is to say, she researches, asks questions, looks hard and acquires understanding before committing to the work.
This has been the case since the early 1990s, when the de la Cruzes became close friends with the late Felix Gonzalez-Torres and purchased a number of his works. "He opened my mind," says Rosa. "He taught me that everything didn’t have to be factual. Questions should be welcomed, and sometimes they should remain unanswered."These days, Gonzalez-Torres is the symbolic center of the collection. His works are displayed in a chapel-like room with a glass ceiling at the very heart of the house. Bathed in sunlight, the room exhibits Gonzalez-Torres’ "Untitled (Portrait of Dad)" (1991), which consists of a pile of white candies, and an untitled work from 1989–90 comprised of two stacks of paper—from both of which visitors can take a sample. Also in the room is "Untitled (America #3)" (1992), a delicate light bulb string piece by the artist. For the U.S. pavilion at the last Venice Biennale, which was dedicated to Gonzalez-Torres, the de la Cruzes lent one of the artist’s large poetic billboards.
For the de la Cruzes, the other side of diligently "doing homework" before purchasing work is figuring out what to do with it afterward. For instance, throughout 2003, they acquired the sprawling Ann Lee project—a series of multi-media works produced by a group of internationally known artists that included Pierre Huyghe, Philippe Parreno, Liam Gillick and Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, among others. After being on display in the house for a year, it is now in the collections of London’s Tate Museum and North Miami’s MoCA. The couple donated the entire group to the two museums so that it would be co-owned by institutions that could care for it and display it adequately.
This future-oriented thinking also manifests itself in the way that Rosa approaches the Miami art community. For years, she privately funded student trips to major international exhibitions. She is a founding member of the alternative exhibition venue The Moore Space and now heads its board. She maintains close ties with the curatorial staffs of local museums. She also opens her residence in December, during the fairs, for three days of breakfasts so that the international community can become acquainted with a side of the city that is very different from the commercial context of the fairs. And most recently she has established, in partnership with DAAD in Berlin and La Plateau in Paris, a residency program for young Miami artists to spend time abroad. "One has to think of the future," she says, "of the new generation of artists."
Gean Moreno is an artist and writer in Miami.