JUAN SÁNCHEZ

Review by Julio Flores

For a Puerto Rican like myself, who was carried from Chicago's Humboldt Park neighborhood to the west suburbs by the sheltering arms of parents achieving the American Dream, a visit to the Dr. Pedro Albizu Campos Museum of Puerto Rican History and Culture both intimidates and inspires. Moreover, it sparks a personal sense of urgency to learn. Visitors-no matter what their personal history-stood to learn a lot from this exhibition of collages by Brooklyn-based artist Juan Sánchez, titled "RICAN/STRUCTIONS." Understanding the various levels of Sánchez's messages requires an exercise in close and repeated examination and the confidence to ask questions. It's like walking into a classroom and being called on for the answer, regardless of whether one raises one's hand or not. At first glance, the work seems pretty straightforward-colorful, repeated imagery and text that indicate a relationship between parts in a whole. There's no argument that those parts-native Taino petroglyphs, African-inspired masks, Spanish-European Catholic imagery, and much more-are blended into Puerto Rican history and culture. But the work also reveals a method of careful placement and planned layering. Like an investigator breaking ground over a time capsule that he himself buried, Sánchez invites his audience to continue the excavation. Here, repressed collective memories surface, and the learning kicks in.

A close inspection of El Grito Il and El Grito III uncovers multiple levels of passion and the pacifying forces working against them. A repeated newspaper photograph of political demonstrators shouting with their fists raised high sharply contrasts with a repeated image of Mary gently cradling the baby Jesus. Highlighted with pastels and systematically scratched around the edges, they surround and close in on one of Sánchez's most passionate, yet alarming, images, a black-and-white photograph of a woman holding a screaming baby. The woman stands nude against a scarred wall with the Puerto Rican flag concealing her face. She holds the baby securely, but not in a very comforting manner. The composition raises many questions: Does the woman with the flag for a face represent Puerto Rico's ambiguous existence as a United States colony? Is the baby a symbol for the working-class Puerto Rican, vulnerable in the arms of an evolving culture? Do the demonstrators represent the Puerto Rican political prisoners to whom Sánchez dedicated this show? Learning and re-learning the answers begins by peeling away layers of history, much like Sánchez tears into his reconstructed imagery.

Sánchez has returned to some of his works, radically changing them even after they've been exhibited. Perhaps this is one reason why he chooses to reproduce his collages as color laser prints, a medium that allows him to change the work as quickly as he can press the "print" key. Even so, he retains the intimate feel often lost in such processes by carefully tearing the edges of each print to emulate the irregular, deckled edges of handmade paper. Sánchez's work evolves much like the social and political issues addressed within it. And although the issues are specific to Puerto Rico, the themes are universal. They suggest a long history of human oppression, much like the politically charged paintings of Leon Golub, both a teacher to Sánchez and a respected peer. The lessons are passed on, the learning continues.

JULIO FLORES

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Exhibit location:

Dr. Pedro Albizu Campos Museum of Puerto Rican History and Culture

1457 N. California Avenue, Illinois 60622

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Review: Juan Sánchez, New Art Examiner; p. 43-44, July/August, 1997