José Lerma, La Bella Crisis: MOCAD | Detroit, MI

In La Bella Crisis Puerto Rican artist José Lerma revisits MOCAD’s history by transforming the museum’s main gallery, once an auto showroom, into an “art fair”. Lerma’s site specific installation is a still life comprised of found materials, paintings, and personal artifacts, constructed over the period of a month and dismantled at the end of the exhibition.

Lerma will be working in the gallery using the space as a studio to complete his installation, visitors are encouraged to engage with Lerma during this month long residency. La Bella Crisis comments on obsolescence, the effects of transient economic models and the beauty of impermanence, while addressing labor and the authenticity of simple objects. See Lerma’s socio-political finished portrait on June 13, 2014.

José Lerma currently lives and works in New York and Chicago, where he is a faculty member at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Support for José Lerma: La Bella crisis partially provided by Kavi Gupta CHICAGO|BERLIN, Andrea Rosen Gallery, and INCA Detroit, an artist/scholar/poet in residency and an exhibition/lecture space in Detroit, founded by Bergman/Salinas in 2011.

Exhibition programming support is generously provided by the Taubman Foundation and the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Arts. Additional funding for programming and educational initiatives is provided by the Edith S. Briskin/Shirley K. Schlafer Foundation. Additional support is provided by The Michigan Council for Arts and Cultural Affairs and Renaissance Media.

José Lerma: La Bella Crisis is organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit and curated by Elysia Borowy-Reeder, Executive Director, and coordinated at MOCAD by Exhibitions Coordinator Zeb Smith.