MOAD Unbound

MOAD Unbound

Issue Number 2, Loriel Beltrán, Hreinn Fridfinnsson, Jorge Pardo

Spring 2024

The second issue of MOAD Unbound includes essays and interviews reflecting on the three exhibitions in the museum’s 2021–22 season, namely Loriel Beltrán: Constructed Color, Hreinn Fridfinnsson: For the Time Being, and Jorge Pardo: Mongrel. In “Pleated Time,” the art historian Juan Ledezma looks at Beltrán’s innovative paintings through the lenses of art history and temporality, while an interview between Beltán and MOAD Consulting Curator Joseph R. Wolin, “My Paintings Start with Questions,” examines the artist’s studio practice and influences. Curator and writer Russel Ferguson, in an essay titled "Nothing and Everything," explores the ways in which Pardo's installation intersects with his biography, which includes passing through the Freedom Tower as a child while immigrating to the United States from Cuba with his family.

An online series of occasional texts, MOAD Unbound encourages deeper looks at the contemporary art, design, performances, and other events in MOAD's galleries or offsite as part of the Museum Without Boundaries initiative.

Read excerpts from MOAD Unbound below and read the full texts by clicking the buttons to the left.

“I think there is something really interesting about paintings that seem to emit their own light. Light has always been such a central concern of painting. I have also worked on the opposite of this, by trying to make very dark paintings that are still chromatic. These absorb light, but, as you engage with them, they have areas of contrast where they seem to emit light as well, creating a pulsating effect.”
——Loriel Beltrán

“By inserting dry morsels of paint into the still congealing blocks of latex and thereby disrupting their stratified molding within the crates, Beltrán now “amplifies,” as he puts it, those “imperfections in the pouring” that result in the accidental tears and variations in thickness of the stripes. He creates such disruptions in sequence, at intervals that in the finished paintings will prompt the appearance of a pattern—a throb of cluttered color, the steady beat of muddled daubs across the painting’s surface.”
——Juan Ledezma