Pleasure Principle

NORTH MIAMI—Cuban-born, Los Angeles–based artist Jorge Pardo’s unabashed embrace of aesthetic thrills has always trodden a fine line. Created in a bright citrus palette, his sculptural works and installations—equal parts art, design, and architecture infused with Minimalist and modernist tendencies—are pleasant, if occasionally relentlessly so. Case in point: Pardo’s golden-hour-hued tile makeover in 2000 of Dia:Chelsea’s bookstore, in New York, which at first was cool and delightful, but on repeat visits felt a bit brassy. (Such is the anxiety that emerges when gratification is too easily had.) It is fitting, then, that the artist’s first U.S. survey will be mounted this month in Miami, a city of pastels and breezy modernist design that also suggest questionable authenticity. Some 60 works—including early paintings—will be presented in vignettelike installations that represent the rooms of a house. In keeping with Pardo’s interest in variants beyond museum walls, the show will encompass his site-specific projects around the world, including the artist’s LA home, presented as a ’70s-tastic photomural on MOCA’s walls. Should Pardo’s take on design whet your appetite for more, the nearby Bass Museum of Art is staging “Promises of Paradise,” which explores Miami’s midcentury architecture and design as defined by George Farkas, Kay Pancoast, and Fran Williams, among others.

Jorge Pardo, Dec. 4–Mar. 2, 2008, MoCA, North Miami, mocanomi.org

"Pleasure Principle" comes to ARTINFO from the December 2007 issue of Modern Painters.