Quisqueya Henríquez The Breuer Building, 2011
This collage presents an image of the lobby of the Whitney Museum of American Art, a building designed by Bauhaus instructor and modernist architect, Marcel Breuer, whom Henríquez attributes the title of her piece. The triangles incised across the bottom of the image indicate that her work is not the Museum, but an image of it. Similarly, the moiré pattern underscores the work as an image of an image. This appropriation questions the relationship between an art institution and herself as an artist, not to mention the process of legitimization.
Henríquez continues to reinvent the image by inserting a drawing by Louise Bourgeois on the opposite wall. While subtle, this inclusion alludes to a Whitney Biennial that once excluded Bourgeois, an incident that deeply angered her.
Quisqueya Henríquez From the Collection, MoMA Works Online, 2011 This installation comprises several images that Henríquez procured from the Museum of Modern Art online collection, each printed in the same size and resolution determined by the Internet. The major goal of the work is to conceptualize the artist’ process, which Henríquez indicates by introducing situations that relate to the different methods of production used by the artists featured on the plank. Some situations appear subtle, such as the image of Jackie Winsor’s Laminated Plywood (1973), which Henríquez supplements with sawdust to simulate her artistic production. She also exposes the contextual similarities between the images displayed and the installation itself.
According to Henríquez, this particular reference “reflects the perfect combination of humor and frustration, while contrasting with the magnificent beauty of the Breuer design.”
By merging the work of different artists of different genres, Henríquez creates a postmodern pastiche of modern and contemporary artwork featured in MoMA’s online collection.