“Pink Room / De Color De Rosa” By Juan Rojo

This event opens as part of Women's History Month at The University of Memphis and shares an opening reception with "What I Kept" in AMUM's main galleries and "Beth Van Hosen" in Gallery B. Time: Opening reception on March 20th from 5pm-7:30pm Exhibition opens to the public on March 14th-June 27th, 2015. Location: ArtLab (experimental contemporary art space located within AMUM) Art Museum of the University of Memphis 142 Communications and Fine Art Building Memphis, TN 38152 Recommended parking: Parking is free in the Central Parking lot after 4:30pm on Friday and on Saturdays all day. Parking is 2 dollars per hour in the parking garage located off Innovation Drive near the Central Avenue intersection (The Museum is located directly behind the parking garage's rear East exit.) Artist Statement: I am a painter and video creator. I have been attracted to the human figure as an art subject for as long as I can remember. My strongest formative influences came from the figurative tradition, especially the School of London. Several years ago I began to examine my work – as well as that of artists who influenced me the most – from a feminist perspective. This led me to a greater sensitivity to the male gaze throughout art history and an awareness of the construction of femininity in contemporary media. My current painting and video work concentrates on narratives of disempowerment (particularly those imposed on children) and the stereotypical idea of female beauty and submissive feminine behavior. I explore advertising and media directed to women (particularly to young girls), and how the media uses a pink-and-glitter aesthetic and role models such as princesses or fairies as a vehicle to transmit conservative values. In my work, I employ everyday materials like scrapbook patterns, crochet, or paper doilies to create naive, hyper-decorative works that merge disparate subject matters and exhibit a high-contrast between form and content, where high and low coexist, as means of revealing the perversions within these apparently innocent narratives. “Pink Room /De Color de Rosa” is a multimedia installation of projected videos, wall painting, and printmaking. The main element of the exhibition is a multichannel projection of videos that depict women performing a Cinderella inspired routine. The performances were recorded in their own houses where I brought a big pink cloth that functioned as a stage curtain. The intense pink color of the videos is the only illumination of the room, bathing the viewer in a warm pink light. This installation interrogates the strategies of the patriarchy and questions the construction of the feminine and all that exists within its confines. official announcement page: http://www.memphis.edu/amum/pinkroom.php