Centrust
CenTrust (2012) consists of a rectangular slab of granite that once marked the entrance to the former downtown Miami headquarters of the Centrust Bank, which collapsed in scandal amid the savings-and-loan imbroglios of the late 1980s and early 1990s. By purchasing and then re-installing it on a public street, the artist converts the artifact into an unusually aggressive example of readymade sculpture, imbuing it with new levels of meaning through an act of radical re-contextualization. Rene Morales
The Centrust bank was designed by I.M. Pei while he was designing the new entrance for the Louvre Museum in Paris and is considered Miami’s first project by an international “star-architect”.
IN GOD WE TRUST
2010 / Far-Side Gallery, Westchester, Florida
The Far-Side Gallery is located in a 1950’s home built in a suburban residential neighborhood called Westchester. The objects exhibited inside of the gallery were: Three large-scale xerox paintings: Snow White, Plan Voisin and Cloverleaf as well as Nine swimming pool Falla drawings that are now in the PAMM collection. A reproduction of the Centrust sign made of EPS foam was exhibited outside of the Far-Side gallery.
Swimming Pool Falla
The outline of an life-size swimming pool was set ablaze in the back yard of the Far Side Gallery on March 19th, 2010 in honor of the Spanish tradition of Las Fallas. The tradition of las Fallas stems from the 16th century when Spanish carpenters would perform a spring-cleaning by setting ablaze the remnants of their workshop. The tradition has evolved today into construction of elaborate wooden structures whose subject matter is both political and satirical.
