Reflecting the diverse range of activity within an urban circuit, specifically highlighting the mundane and repetitive elements of contemporary culture (stretching from the core stimulus cycle of the human body to the positioning of one's hairstyle and the location of their name on their company's payroll sheet), is a recurring theme in visual art. Pertinent changes have appeared in the deployment of these observations over the last century; stemming from Marcel Duchamp's 'readymade' objects and the academic bolstering of photography as a relevant aesthetic medium, artists have injected traces of the world around them into the physical work itself rather than simply observing or critiquing it. Miami-based contemporary artist Jorge Enrique uniquely formats three recent series of works, 'Numbers', 'Urban D-construction' and 'Low Ride' melding triggers of ancient human culture (totem poles and petrified substances) with that of the most recent symbologies of the urban jungle (fiberglass, steel and other pre-fabricated, factory-grade materials).

Enrique was born in Havana in 1960 and began his academic studies at the Alfred Glassel School of Art in Houston in 1991. His early showings in Houston and Miami showcased bold, primary tones swathed throughout pronounced compositions of geometric abstraction. This is an invariably premature conclusion as Enrique's practice has expanded over three decades of critical experimentation and manipulation of and within varying media formats: sculpture, installation and highly traditional, wall-hung canvases. Enrique cites this development as a result of piercing the veil of urban culture, literally, at the street level.

Ironically, as man pushes ever harder to reign in the imagined chaos of his surroundings (with ground zero, very possibly, being the invention of mathematics and numbers), inspecting the manifestation of this process often results in sensory overload. Within his 'Numbers' works, Enrique harnesses that disparity in his mixed media (wood with fresco, layered paints, carvings and steel) totem poles, with the descent of abstract, blurred number matrices flowing from a vast source overhead. Totemism, according to Belgian anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss (adapted from Sir James George Frazer's seminal research on social anthropology), 'results in the replacement of the human genitor by spirits closer still to natural forces... a touchstone which allowed the savage, within culture itself, to be isolated from civilized man.'^[1] Lévi-Strauss couples Frazer's theory with a particularly modern phenomena of '[grand] hysteria... sometimes explained as an effect of a social evolution which has displaced the symbolic expression of mental troubles from the somatic to the psychic sphere.' ^[2]

The beginnings of 'Urban D-construction' (2009-10) are visible in his inquisitive source photographs of manholes, asphalt formations in sidewalks and roadways, distinct color palettes of walls offset with dumpsters, and sliding bay doors in warehouses and garages. Morphed into heavily-collaged and manipulated silkscreen prints frozen with resin onto canvas, this would indicate an interest in the physical composition of the urban environment and the seemingly distant echoes of mankind's earliest municipal personality traits. Enrique's extensively-lacquered mixed media works from this series layer vivid, pulsating colors alongside the heavy tones of the streets and its accoutrements. Following his 'Urban D-construction' series, 'Low Ride' (2011-) initiates a tangible bridge in practice between Conceptual, Pop and Installation Art forms. The automotive cultural quirk known as 'lowriding' has its origins in the Hot Rod era of the late 1960's, when the explosion of the American interstate system and industrial output from burgeoning carmakers such as Ford, GM and Buick began to take hold. The late 1970's introduced a variation of the classic Hot Rod, remarkable for its hydraulic suspension able to be lowered and heightened by the flick of a switch. ^[3]

A subculture of 'lowriders' formed specifically within the Chicano and, less prominently, the Asian-American community; each customized car was a reflection of a certain social network, associated with particular styles of music, fashion and visual art. Jorge Enrique locates the aesthetic markers of these subcultures through a subtle reinvention of the same paint materials used to adorn the 'lowriders' commonly seen throughout the urban landscape in Miami, in this instance. The organic, smoothly shaped bulges from flat squares of glittering fiberglass paint appear to evoke natural organs versus a mechanistic byproduct. While indications of the scope of the 'lowrider' culture may be alien to most viewers (wet t-shirt and bikini contests, barbecues and 'dancing' contests are not even remotely hinted), the industrial elements and structural format of the works cross over into international automotive and applied design arenas. As in his 'Numbers' and 'Urban D-construction' series, 'Low Ride' maintains a continuous dialogue between the natural world and the technological world, in such a way as to uphold the ambiguity of its critical genesis. It is clear that the bulbous projections are produced with factory-grade precision, obscuring immediate possibilities of comparison with a natural element. Yet, the issue of 'subjectivity' within the machine is another hallmark of Enrique's work.

Academically celebrated artists of the Modern art historical canon (Marcel Duchamp, Jasper Johns, Yves Klein, Joseph Beuys, Matthew Barney and Rebecca Horn are exemplars) have experimented with the 'sentient machine' theory with an overwhelming number of methodologies and critical approaches within the last century, especially following the World Wars. Focusing on technology and urban subcultural modes to inform the finished aesthetic product, Jorge Enrique offers a specific perspective on the dizzying shifts between man and machine. Petrifying that mathematically-driven, breakneck pace in totem poles in 'Numbers', elevating those systems with the city's grit in 'Urban D-construction', and projecting its progress as illuminated by a distinctive American subculture in 'Low Ride', Enrique's artistic development displays noted signs of an artistic practice informed by accepted contemporary artistic movements, and simultaneously rewarded with a degree of poignant storytelling relaying his own background and social influences. Numbers, the street and machines: in color.

Shana Beth Mason, M.A.
University of Glasgow (Christie's Education London)
March 2011

[1] Lévi-Strauss, Claude. 'Introduction', Totemism (trans. Rodney Needham). Beacon Press, Boston, 1963. pp. 2

[2] ibid. pp. 1

[3] Berger, Michael L. The Automobile in American Culture: A Reference Guide. Greenwood Press, Connecticut, 2001. pp. 153