Luis Gispert
Encyclopedia
Luis Gispert is an American
sculptor and photographer, living and working in Brooklyn
, New York
. Luis Gispert earned an MFA
at Yale University
in 2001, a BFA
in Film from Art Institute of Chicago
in 1996, and attended Miami Dade College
from 1990 to 1992.
Luis Gispert creates art through a wide range of media, including photographs, film, sounds, and sculptures, focusing upon hip-hop and youth culture, and Cuban-American history. Some of his sculptures incorporate objects identified with hip hop, such as turntables, chrome tire rims, and boom boxes, into functional designs usable in other manners, such as furniture. His installation art
graced the 2002 Whitney Biennial
at the Whitney Museum of American Art
, and has been exhibited internationally at galleries and museums such the Brooklyn Museum of Art, and the Studio Museum in Harlem
in New York, Art Pace in Texas, the Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami
, the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston
, Palazzo Brocherasio in Turin, and The Royal Academy in London. Gispert has also participated in several exhibitions with high-profile commercial galleries including Gagosian Gallery
, Andrea Rosen Gallery, and Deitch Projects
in New York. He is represented by Mary Boone
Gallery in New York, Rhona Hoffman Gallery in Chicago, and Fredric Snitzer Gallery in Miami, Florida.
Gispert describes the first ten years of his career as a period during which he underwent a personal transformation in his attempt to comprehend why certain objects and events strike him physically and emotionally. Always, there is the push- and-pull between seduction and aggression in his work that inundates the viewer’s senses. His photographs, videos, films and sculptures are complex, composed arrangements that delve into the familiar and the unknown, the mainstream and the marginalized, to expose and address the various subcultures that infiltrate the mainstream. These subjects also provided him the means to explore the sheer aggressiveness and excessiveness of the hip hop ornamentation or the effusively decorated interior of his immigrant family’s homes. Similarly the volume of the rap lyrics lip-synched by a cheerleader in Can It Be That It Was All So Simple Then, 2001, or the unnerving scream of a car alarm mouthed by another cheerleader in Block Watching, 2002, is overwhelming. His most recent photographs of landscapes viewed through the windows of customized vehicles achieve the widescreen grandeur of CinemaScope film and provide the viewer the sensation of occupying the driver’s seat. He shot hundreds of sheets of film for each landscape in an attempt to capture the perfect vista, but ultimately collaged various details to produce landscapes that most closely adhered to his ideal.
Gispert’s cheerleader series of lush, color photographs depicting cheerleaders accessorized with the hip hop gold chains and jewelry, first brought him to the art world’s attention. Although this series was perceived as a reference to popular culture and cultural identity, Gispert approached the subject from the perspective of Baroque religious paintings depicting levitating saints at moments of epiphany and the conventions of sports photography, which established the iconic image of the sports hero in mid air. The cheerleader photographs were achieved with cinematic techniques and methods to produce special effects, most notably the green-screen. Gispert used a long exposure to photograph his models suspended on wires in a chroma-key green room. In movies, actors play against the green background, which is typically superimposed onto another backdrop to complete the illusion. However, Gispert retained the green field to reveal the artifice.
Filmmaking has played a major role in Gispert’s career. He has consistently contrasted films that use the syntax of cinema as exercises in the manipulation of sound, image and film time, as in Stereomongrel, 2005, and Smother, 2008, with raw, aggressive videos that deliberately contradict film conventions. Gispert has used elements of destruction to designate the end of one phase of his career and the beginning of another. He always approaches new projects by trying to work himself out of a problem. This occasionally requires the obliteration of the past and has manifested itself in a sculpture composed of all the props and hip hop ornamentation that he used in his Cheerleader series or the fictitious baptism of a pet dog (representing himself as a child) by fire in order to liberate his creativity in his film “Smother”.
Works include films such as Stereomongrel http://chelseaartgalleries.com/Zach+Feuer+Gallery+_28LFL_29/Stereomongrel.html.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
sculptor and photographer, living and working in Brooklyn
Brooklyn
Brooklyn is the most populous of New York City's five boroughs, with nearly 2.6 million residents, and the second-largest in area. Since 1896, Brooklyn has had the same boundaries as Kings County, which is now the most populous county in New York State and the second-most densely populated...
, New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
. Luis Gispert earned an MFA
Master of Fine Arts
A Master of Fine Arts is a graduate degree typically requiring 2–3 years of postgraduate study beyond the bachelor's degree , although the term of study will vary by country or by university. The MFA is usually awarded in visual arts, creative writing, filmmaking, dance, or theatre/performing arts...
at Yale University
Yale University
Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...
in 2001, a BFA
Bachelor of Fine Arts
In the United States and Canada, the Bachelor of Fine Arts degree, usually abbreviated BFA, is the standard undergraduate degree for students seeking a professional education in the visual or performing arts. In some countries such a degree is called a Bachelor of Creative Arts or BCA...
in Film from Art Institute of Chicago
Art Institute of Chicago
The School of the Art Institute of Chicago is one of America's largest accredited independent schools of art and design, located in the Loop in Chicago, Illinois. It is associated with the museum of the same name, and "The Art Institute of Chicago" or "Chicago Art Institute" often refers to either...
in 1996, and attended Miami Dade College
Miami Dade College
Miami Dade College, or simply Miami Dade or MDC, is a state college with eight campuses and twenty-one outreach centers located throughout Miami-Dade County, Florida in the United States. It is part of the Florida College System. Miami Dade College is the largest school in the Florida College...
from 1990 to 1992.
Luis Gispert creates art through a wide range of media, including photographs, film, sounds, and sculptures, focusing upon hip-hop and youth culture, and Cuban-American history. Some of his sculptures incorporate objects identified with hip hop, such as turntables, chrome tire rims, and boom boxes, into functional designs usable in other manners, such as furniture. His installation art
Installation art
Installation art describes an artistic genre of three-dimensional works that are often site-specific and designed to transform the perception of a space. Generally, the term is applied to interior spaces, whereas exterior interventions are often called Land art; however, the boundaries between...
graced the 2002 Whitney Biennial
Whitney Biennial
The Whitney Biennial is a biennale exhibition of contemporary American art, typically by young and lesser known artists, on display at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City, USA. The event began as an annual exhibition in 1932, the first biennial was in 1973...
at the Whitney Museum of American Art
Whitney Museum of American Art
The Whitney Museum of American Art, often referred to simply as "the Whitney", is an art museum with a focus on 20th- and 21st-century American art. Located at 945 Madison Avenue at 75th Street in New York City, the Whitney's permanent collection contains more than 18,000 works in a wide variety of...
, and has been exhibited internationally at galleries and museums such the Brooklyn Museum of Art, and the Studio Museum in Harlem
Studio Museum in Harlem
The Studio Museum in Harlem is an American contemporary art museum in the Harlem neighborhood of New York City, New York. It was founded in 1968 as the first such museum in the U.S. devoted to the art of African-Americans, specializing in 19th and 20th century work as well work of artists of...
in New York, Art Pace in Texas, the Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami
Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami
The Museum of Contemporary Art is a museum located in the heart of downtown North Miami, Florida. The structure was designed by the internationally acclaimed architecture firm Gwathmey Siegel & Associates Architects, New York, which worked in conjunction with the Miami firm of Gelabert-Navia to...
, the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston
Contemporary Arts Museum Houston
The Contemporary Arts Museum – Houston is a not-for-profit institution in Houston, Texas, dedicated to presenting the contemporary art of our time to the public....
, Palazzo Brocherasio in Turin, and The Royal Academy in London. Gispert has also participated in several exhibitions with high-profile commercial galleries including Gagosian Gallery
Gagosian Gallery
Gagosian Gallery is a contemporary art gallery owned and directed by Larry Gagosian. There are currently eleven gallery spaces: three in New York; two in London; one in each of Beverly Hills, Rome, Athens, Paris, Geneva, Hong Kong and Moscow.-1980s:...
, Andrea Rosen Gallery, and Deitch Projects
Deitch Projects
Deitch Projects was a contemporary art gallery in New York City founded by Jeffrey Deitch.-History:Since opening with a performance by Vanessa Beecroft in February 1996, the gallery has presented nearly one hundred and eighteen solo exhibitions and projects, ten thematic exhibitions, and a few...
in New York. He is represented by Mary Boone
Mary Boone
Mary Boone is the owner and director of the Mary Boone Gallery and was instrumental in the New York art market of the 1980s...
Gallery in New York, Rhona Hoffman Gallery in Chicago, and Fredric Snitzer Gallery in Miami, Florida.
Gispert describes the first ten years of his career as a period during which he underwent a personal transformation in his attempt to comprehend why certain objects and events strike him physically and emotionally. Always, there is the push- and-pull between seduction and aggression in his work that inundates the viewer’s senses. His photographs, videos, films and sculptures are complex, composed arrangements that delve into the familiar and the unknown, the mainstream and the marginalized, to expose and address the various subcultures that infiltrate the mainstream. These subjects also provided him the means to explore the sheer aggressiveness and excessiveness of the hip hop ornamentation or the effusively decorated interior of his immigrant family’s homes. Similarly the volume of the rap lyrics lip-synched by a cheerleader in Can It Be That It Was All So Simple Then, 2001, or the unnerving scream of a car alarm mouthed by another cheerleader in Block Watching, 2002, is overwhelming. His most recent photographs of landscapes viewed through the windows of customized vehicles achieve the widescreen grandeur of CinemaScope film and provide the viewer the sensation of occupying the driver’s seat. He shot hundreds of sheets of film for each landscape in an attempt to capture the perfect vista, but ultimately collaged various details to produce landscapes that most closely adhered to his ideal.
Gispert’s cheerleader series of lush, color photographs depicting cheerleaders accessorized with the hip hop gold chains and jewelry, first brought him to the art world’s attention. Although this series was perceived as a reference to popular culture and cultural identity, Gispert approached the subject from the perspective of Baroque religious paintings depicting levitating saints at moments of epiphany and the conventions of sports photography, which established the iconic image of the sports hero in mid air. The cheerleader photographs were achieved with cinematic techniques and methods to produce special effects, most notably the green-screen. Gispert used a long exposure to photograph his models suspended on wires in a chroma-key green room. In movies, actors play against the green background, which is typically superimposed onto another backdrop to complete the illusion. However, Gispert retained the green field to reveal the artifice.
Filmmaking has played a major role in Gispert’s career. He has consistently contrasted films that use the syntax of cinema as exercises in the manipulation of sound, image and film time, as in Stereomongrel, 2005, and Smother, 2008, with raw, aggressive videos that deliberately contradict film conventions. Gispert has used elements of destruction to designate the end of one phase of his career and the beginning of another. He always approaches new projects by trying to work himself out of a problem. This occasionally requires the obliteration of the past and has manifested itself in a sculpture composed of all the props and hip hop ornamentation that he used in his Cheerleader series or the fictitious baptism of a pet dog (representing himself as a child) by fire in order to liberate his creativity in his film “Smother”.
Works include films such as Stereomongrel http://chelseaartgalleries.com/Zach+Feuer+Gallery+_28LFL_29/Stereomongrel.html.