Art in context, April 25-June 1, 1996

PEPON OSORIO

Pepon Osorio’s Badge of Honor is powerful in its simplicity. Re-installed in the Ronald Feldman Gallery after its debut in a Newark store front in 1995, the installation is classic Osorio. It consists of two rooms; the first, a father’s jail cell, stark, institutional, devoid of the occupants personality, save for a few family photos (and I must mention, the cell seems very large, but I suppose one must consider artistic license). The second, a son’s bedroom, opulent, full of posters of sports heroes, old family photos, and electronic equipment. The bedroom is a monument to Puerto Rican culture and esthetic, encrusted with gold and silver decoration, the walls colorfully plastered with hundreds of baseball cards. As in his installation Scene of the Crime (Whose Crime?) in the 1993 Whitney Biennial, the theatrical environment is both celebratory and accusatory, exploding typical visions of a Latin American aesthetic by carrying it to an extreme.

Since his first exhibitions in 1985, Osorio has been an artist deeply in touch with his community. This installation got its start in community meetings he attended in the largely Puerto Rican section of Newark. He addresses an issue that is facing many urban families in this day and age, the separation of parent and child. On the wall of the jail cell is a large projected video image of a father, from the chest up, who converses with a similar image of this son, projected on the bedroom wall next-door. These conversations were taped as Osorio traveled back and forth between the Northern State Penitentiary and family’s home in New Jersey. The conversation is candid and personal, even if it seems a bit strained at times. The father and son talk of honor and shame, their feelings for each other, the son’s desire for the father to be near, and their lives in these different environments. The conversation is able to escape the feeling of a talk show expose, a trap that it could have easily fallen into.

These two rooms are the stage sets where this drama of loss and hope is played out. The obvious care, craft and emotional energy that are put into these “sets” prevent them from seeming lifeless and stagnant. Most strongly in the son’s room, one feels that although it is filled with a group of inanimate objects, the room breaths with life as the conversation is heard amplified through the gallery, and the spectral heads of father and son float above the furnishings of their separate lives.

Unfortunately, the exhibition loses so much of its original power, having been removed from the original site in the Newark storefront. There, not only did Osorio’s rooms feel filled with life, but they were a part of the life they sprung from. The noise of the urban streets filtered in, along with its residents, and this project, having grown out of that community, feels cramped and a little plaintive in the white, darkened, quiet, gallery space. Luckily, Osorio has been able to infuse enough life into the piece so that it still has the power to visually and emotionally touch the viewer.

SARAH WARD