Placeholder is a multi-part exhibition that pairs Mexico City-based artist Victor Pérez-Rul and curator Leslie Moody Castro working together with a team to produce a project unique to the Visual Arts Center. Placeholder relies on the student community. It will come to fruition through a highly collaborative method that relies on the voices of each of its student participants. The project will activate the various disciplines representative within this student body. In content, the project will explore the human consciousness of energy systems. Through the artist’s collaboration with students focused in art, physics, engineering, architecture, and design, an immersive and interactive environment relying on recycled solar power into kinetic and sonic energy will take shape. Maquettes of Pérez-Rul’s related work—solar-powered pods that emit sound and light at night—will be exhibited on the outdoor plaza of Austin’s Mexican American Cultural Center (MACC). The project aims to increase interdisciplinary and international dialogue between the arts and sciences, and between the United States and Mexico.
Placeholder continues with a selection of works on view at Austin’s Mexican American Cultural Center (MACC).
Additional exhibition support comes from the National Endowments for the Arts, CLAVIS—Center for Latin American Visual Studies, The Energy Institute of The University of Texas at Austin and Solartec.
Bio
Victor Pérez-Rul (Mexico City, 1983) works among the relation between energy, matter and consciousness, using sculpture, installation and varied technologies. Developing and applying his own experimental creative methods, his goal is to promote the art of energy. Pérez-Rul fuses scientific research, technology, and empirical work through technological, electronic mediums and physical and chemical processes. From a posthumanist perspective he generates artworks that encourage introspection. He has shown his work in Mexico at Salón ACME, White Cremnitz Gallery and Galería Karen Huber, at Antiguo Colegio de San Ildefonso, Museo de la Ciudad de México, Museo de la Ciudad de Querétaro and Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Morelia. His international shows include the Crossing Border Festival (Den Haag, The Netherlands 2009), Young Art Festival (Beverwijk, The Netherlands 2010), Melkfabriek, Museum Hilversum (both in Hilversum, The Netherlands, 2010), Unpainted Art Fair (Munich, Germany, 2014) and Pink Art Fair (Seoul, Korea, 2015) among others.
About the Curator
Leslie Moody Castro is an independent curator and writer living and working in Mexico and Texas. She has organized and collaborated on exhibitions at Artpace San Antonio, for the Contemporary Art Month, San Antonio, Texas State University, CentralTrak Dallas, and Co-Lab Projects. She is committed to creating moments of artistic exchange and dialogue and as such recently co-founded Unlisted Projects, an artist residency program in Austin, Texas. She has been nominated for various awards for her work in Austin. Moody Castro has also been selected as Curator and Artistic Director for the Texas Biennial, slated for the fall of 2017. She is also a regular contributor for Artforum, Flash Art International, Frieze, ArtNews, and ArtCritical. Moody Castro earned a Master’s degree at The University of Texas at Austin in Museum Education with a portfolio supplement in Museum Studies in 2010, and a Bachelor’s degree in Art History at DePaul University in Chicago in 2004.