Past Exhibitions

Browse the chronological list of past exhibitions at the Saint Louis University Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCRA), or search for a specific exhibition. Click “View” for more information about an exhibition. If you need further information about an exhibition, please contact us.

Name

Rito, Espejo y Ojo / Ritual, Mirror and Eye: Photography by Luis González-Palma, Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons, and Pablo Soria

Dates

March 28, 2004 to June 13, 2004

Description

MOCRA is pleased to present the work of three significant Latin American artists to St. Louis audiences. While their personal and artistic backgrounds vary, all three artists share a common interest in creating multimedia works that extend the traditional bounds of each medium. These particular works employ the human figure as the central visual motif: iconic portraits, shadowed bodies, and loving meditations on family members. There are also thematic similarities: geographic dislocation, the intermingling of cultures and religions, and a sometimes palpable awareness of the past asserting or insinuating itself in the present.

Luis Gonzalez Palma was born in 1957 in Guatemala City and still lives there today. A self-taught photographer, he studied architecture and cinematography at the Universidad de San Carlos de Guatemala. He has exhibited widely throughout North and South America, Europe and Asia. Gonzalez Palma's work is included in various significant collections such as the Art Institute of Chicago, the Centro de Arte Reína Sofía in Madrid, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Fogg Museum at Harvard University. His best-known work depicts the indigenous and mestizo populations of his home country, often in a staged fashion evoking mythological and cultural characters. In his most familiar images, he paints over the photographs to achieve a sepia quality but leaves the whites of the subjects' eyes unpainted, to startling effect.

Born and raised in Cuba, Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons studied in Havana at the National School of Art and the Superior Institute of Art (ISA), later training at the Massachusetts College of Art in Boston. She has lived and worked in Boston since 1991 and has shown extensively in the United States, Canada and abroad. Her work is in important public and private collections, including the National Museum of Fine Arts in Havana and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Campos-Pons was one of the artists in the United States representation at the 1997 Johannesburg Biennale, and showed in the 2001 Venice Biennale. Campos-Pons works in a variety of media, including photography, painting, and performance video. Recurring themes in her work include maintaining ties with the people and land from which she comes, the special character and role of women's discourse in society, and the nature of family communication.

Pablo Soria was born in Argentina in 1964 and received his BFA from the School of Fine Arts, National University of Tucumán, in 1989. He went on to study in Buenos Aires from 1989 to 1991 on a fellowship from the Fondo Nacional de las Artes for Painting. His works are represented in major private and public collections, including the Museo de Arte Moderno, Buenos Aires; the Philip Morris Collection, New York; and the Museum of Fine Art, Houston. Soria has participated in solo and group exhibitions throughout Latin America, the United States, and Europe. Of his series of self-portraits, he writes, "I place myself as the actor of my memories … It's an autobiographical vision of time, shaded by the obsession with the memory of the country left behind, love, childhood, death and loss." Soria's nostalgia is a powerful lens for his imagery. He lives and works in Miami, Florida.

MOCRA thanks Schneider Gallery, Chicago, for kind assistance in organizing this exhibition.

above:
Installation view of Rito, Espejo y Ojo / Ritual, Mirror and Eye at MOCRA, 2004. Photo by Jeffrey Vaughn.

Related MOCRA Voices episodes

Watch Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons: The Kristen Peterson Lecture

Episode 23: Martha Schneider

Media

Read the Riverfront Times review of Rito, Espejo y Ojo / Ritual, Mirror and Eye.

Exhibition
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Tobi Kahn: Metamorphoses March 8, 1998 to May 8, 1998 Curated by the distinguished art historian Peter Selz, Tobi Kahn: Metamorphoses brings together 37 paintings and 20 sculptures of an artist who extends an American tradition-the distillation of the natural world into elemental forms. Kahn's antecedents in landscape painting include Albert ...
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Consecrations: The Spiritual in Art in the Time of AIDS October 15, 1994 to February 19, 1995 Consecrations is the first group exhibition that seeks to put AIDS within a spiritual framework. The 28 artists in Consecrations represent the religious, ethnic, cultural, sexual and geographical diversity of this country. Several of the artists are expressing first-hand experience ...
Sanctuaries: Recovering the Holy in Contemporary Art, Part One February 14, 1993 to April 11, 1993 MOCRA’s two-part inaugural exhibition features more than 100 works from an wide-ranging roster of artists working in styles ranging from traditional Western figuration to minimalist and geometric abstraction. The artists, generally in their 30s, 40s, and 50s, tend to be disillusioned with the c...
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Georges Rouault: Miserere et Guerre March 8, 2011 to July 31, 2011 Georges Rouault was born in working-class Paris in 1871, and apprenticed as a youth to a stained glass workshop. In late 1890, he enrolled in the École des Beaux-...
Georges Rouault: Miserere et Guerre March 2, 2003 to May 11, 2003 Georges Rouault was born in working-class Paris in 1871, and apprenticed as a youth to a stained glass workshop. In late 1890, he enrolled in the École des Beaux-...
Georges Rouault: Miserere et Guerre January 18, 2000 to April 2, 2000 Georges Rouault was born in working-class Paris in 1871, and apprenticed as a youth to a stained glass workshop. In late 1890, he enrolled in the École des Beaux-...
Georges Rouault: Miserere et Guerre March 21, 1994 to April 26, 1994 Georges Rouault was born in working-class Paris in 1871, and apprenticed as a youth to a stained glass workshop. In late 1890, he enrolled in the École des Beaux-...
Visible Conservation September 22, 2017 to April 8, 2018 In 2016 MOCRA acquired Michael Tracy's powerful 1981 work Cruz to Bishop Oscar Romero, Martyr of El Salvador. With Visible Conservation, we gave visitors a rare behind-the-scenes glimpse of the process of documenting and cleaning the work prior to its reassembly and first presentation at MOCRA. ...
Highlights from the MOCRA Collection July 25, 2016 to September 3, 2016 Enjoy a look at some of the most popular works in the MOCRA collection, along with lesser known gems. Featuring works by Romare Bearden, Dawoud Bey, Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons, Doug DePice, Robert Farber, Luis González Palma, DoDo Jin Ming, Dean Kessman, Chris McCaw, Daniel Ramirez, and Susan S...
Highlights from the MOCRA Collection May 30, 2015 to August 2, 2015 Enjoy a look at some of the most popular works in the MOCRA collection, along with lesser known gems. Featuring works by Romare Bearden, Dawoud Bey, Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons, Junko Chodos, Doug DePice, Luis González Palma, DoDo Jin Ming, Dean Kessman, Frank LaPena, Daniel Ramirez, and Susan S...
Highlights from the MOCRA Collection: The Romero Cross April 21, 2018 to July 28, 2018 Seven months of conservation work culminate in the first public showing at MOCRA of Cruz to Bishop Oscar Romero, Martyr of El Salvador, a major mixed media sculpture by Michael Tracy (b. 1943), who first achieved international recognition in the 1980s, exhibiting in the 1982 Venice Biennal...
Highlights from the MOCRA Collection March 28, 2006 to July 30, 2006 Enjoy a look at some of the most popular works in the MOCRA collection, along with lesser known gems. Featuring works by Seyed Alavi, Luis González Palma, Steven Heilmer, Anne Minich, Shahzia Sikander, Kazuaki Tanahashi, and other artists. above: Sr. Helen David Brancato, Crucif...
Highlights from the MOCRA Collection June 20, 2004 to August 29, 2004 Enjoy a look at some of the most popular works in the MOCRA collection, along with lesser known gems. Featuring works by Peter Ambrose, Gryphon Blackswan, Daniel Goldstein, Steven Luecking, Gary Passanise, Susan Schwalb, Michael Tracy, and other artists. above: Anne Minich, Annie...
Highlights from the MOCRA Collection November 4, 2003 to March 5, 2004 Enjoy a look at some of the most popular works in the MOCRA collection, along with lesser known gems. Featuring works by Seyed Alavi, Nancy Fried, Donald Grant, Tobi Kahn, Virgil Myers, Shahzia Sikander, and other artists. above: Virgil Myers, Noah's Ark, 1999. Latex on wood ...
Highlights from the MOCRA Collection January 7, 2003 to February 23, 2003 Enjoy a look at some of the most popular works in the MOCRA collection, along with lesser known gems. Featuring works by Craig Antrim, Michael David, Sue Eisler, Adrian Kellard, Dean Kessmann, Anne Minich, Daniel Ramirez, and other artists. above: James Rosen, Sta. Cecilia, 1...
Highlights from the MOCRA Collection May 6, 2001 to November 8, 2001 Enjoy a look at some of the most popular works in the MOCRA collection, along with lesser known gems and some works on loan. Featuring works by Peter Ambrose, Lori Bert, Sr. Helen David Brancato, Daniel Goldstein, Carolyn Jones, Stuart Klipper, Horatio Hung-Yan Law, Thomas Skomski, and other arti...
Highlights from the MOCRA Collection July 29, 1999 to December 22, 1999 Enjoy a look at some of the most popular works in the MOCRA collection, along with lesser known gems. Featuring works by Michael David, Eleanor Dickinson, Steven Heilmer, Charlotte Lichtblau, J. W. Mahoney, Jeffrey Miller, and other artists. above: Michael David, Missing in Actio...
Highlights from the MOCRA Collection January 15, 1998 to February 22, 1998 Enjoy a look at some of the most popular works in the MOCRA collection, along with lesser known gems. Featuring works by Gryphon Blackswan, Heidy Sumei Chuang, Greg Edmondson, Jeffrey Miller, Carl Tandatnick, and other artists. above: Gryphon Blackswan, Chasuble for Mass in the T...
Sanctuaries: Recovering the Holy in Contemporary Art, Part Two – Three Major Installations April 18, 1993 to August 29, 1993 MOCRA's two-part inaugural exhibition features more than 100 works from an wide-ranging roster of artists working in styles ranging from traditional Western figuration to minimalist and geometric abstraction. The artists, generally in their 30s, 40s, and 50s, tend to be disillusioned with the cel...
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Selections from the MOCRA Collection September 06, 2023 to December 17, 2023 Enjoy a look at some of the most popular works in the MOCRA collection, along with recent acquisitions and lesser known gems. In particular, we pay tribute to the late James Rosen (1933–2023). In a career spanning more than six decades, Rosen demonstrated a keen under...

Past Exhibitions

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