Ronald Feldman Gallery

Pepón Osorio Badge of Honor April 25 – June 1, 1996 TimeOut New York review Village Voice review art in context review Temple Times (Philadelphia exhibition 2007)
Son's bedroom and Father's prison cell, 1995 installation view south gallery	Son's bedroom (detail) installation view south gallery
Father's prison cell (detail) installation view south gallery	En la barberia no se llora, 1994 (No crying allowed in the Barber Shop) detail of installation mixed media and barber chairs
Click here for a PDF version of the following Press Release.
For Immediate Release: April 5, 1996 Pepón Osorio BADGE OF HONOR APRIL 25 - JUNE 1, 1996 The Feldman Gallery will exhibit, Badge of Honor, by Pepon Osorio, one of the foremost installation artists working today. This installation, his first exhibition at the Feldman Gallery, reflects the artist's commitment to a socially conscious art, an art which explores his Puerto Rican ethnicity and which is deeply tied to the community. Badge of Honor confronts the subject of family separation; incarceration becomes a metaphor for the multitude of forces sundering the family bond. The installation consists of the reconstruction of two adjoining rooms, a prison cell and a fantasy bedroom retreat of a teen-age son. The starkness of the cell contrasts with the ornate excess of the bedroom with its reflective mylar floor, its densely postered walls, its obsessive and golden surfaces. The two rooms imply a relationship which suggests how, within this impoverished community, time spent in jail is seen as a badge of honor. Each room contains a video projection of its respective inhabitant, a man who is actually serving time for a drug-related burglary and his real life son. The enormous faces, in grey halftones, speak to one another in a dialogue taped by Osorio who traveled back and forth between the family home and Northern State Penitentiary in New Jersey. The installation was originally sited in an empty storefront in a largely Hispanic and African-American neighborhood in Newark in the summer of 1995. Involved on every level, the members of the local community became, in effect, co-artists. The piece was then reinstalled at the Newark Museum in September, completing the circular interaction of the art world sphere and local community and dissolving the boundaries between the two. Visually and conceptually, Badge of Honor has much in common with Osorio's earlier installations. Scene of the Crime (Whose Crime?), commissioned by the Whitney Biennial in 1993, explored how television and film stereotype Latino culture; and En la Barberia no se Llora (No Crying Allowed in the Barbershop), first exhibited at Real Art Ways in Hartford, dealt with issues relating to machismo. There will be an opening reception on Thursday, April 25 from 6:00 - 8:00. Gallery hours are Tuesday - Saturday, 10:00 - 6:00. For more information or photographs, contact Emily Graham.
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