José Lerma: Domestic in a Foreign Sense by José Lerma: Madison Museum of Contemporary Art
Domestic in A Foreign Sense is a solo exhibition by José Lerma featuring large-scale portraiture created in thick impasto and limited brush strokes.
The title of the exhibition is a transposition of the phrase "foreign in a domestic sense," which is how US Supreme Court Justice Henry Brown described Puerto Rico in his 1901 decision that placed the island as neither fully part of the United States nor an independent country. This contradictory statement led to years of uncertainty for Puerto Rico.
This paradoxical nature is apparent in the artist's paintings, which feature copious amounts of paint but few brushstrokes, challenging viewers' expectations of both painting and portraiture. His work uniquely collapses historical and autobiographical elements, creating pieces that are part art history and part personal mythology.With a career spanning over two decades, Lerma's return to the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art is particularly significant, as it was here that he had his first museum exhibition in the 1999 Wisconsin Triennial after earning his MFA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
