
1301PE is pleased to announce its fifth exhibition of new work by Los Angeles based artist Jorge Pardo.
This exhibition will be a survey of Pardo’s unrealized architectural projects to date presented as wallpaper. The wallpaper will create a sublime environment in which the viewer can contemplate Pardo’s extraordinary diversity of work. From his pier in Hamburg to his auditorium for the Smithsonian, the viewer journeys through a body of work, which defies categorization. Also included in the exhibition is a new chandelier. Pardo appropriates such domestic architectural elements as alluring yet functional sculptures that destabilize the audience’s expectations about art.
Jorge Pardo was born in 1963 in Havana, Cuba and studied at the University of Illinois, Chicago, and Art Center College of Design, Pasadena. He lives and works in Los Angeles. He has exhibited internationally at institutions such as at MOCA, Los Angeles, Kunsthalle Basel, Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Rotterdam, and several site-specific installations including the recently completed dining room for the German Parliament in Berlin, and his own bar, The Mountain, in Los Angeles’s Chinatown.
One-person museum exhibitions and projects include Mont Blanc Kulturstiftung, Hamburg and Sotheby’s, New York, 2001; Dia Art Foundation, New York, and Kunsthalle Basel, 2000; Museum Abteiberg, Monchengladbach, 1999; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, 1998; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, and Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, 1997. Selected group exhibitions include “Public Offering” Museum of Modern Art, 2001; Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden, 2001; The Public Art Fund, New York, 1999; The Jewish Museum, New York, 1998; Institute of Contemporary Art, London, 1997; Traffic, CAPA Musee d’Art Contemporain, Bordeaux, France, 1996; Le Labyrinthe Moral, Centre d’Art Contemporaine, Dijon, France, and Kunsthalle der Hypo-Kulturstiftung, Munich, Germany, 1995.
Jorge Pardo (b. 1963, Cuba) explores the intersection of contemporary painting, design, sculpture, and architecture. All of Pardo’s work shares a sense of colour harmony; in other words, painterly questions come into play in an oeuvre that otherwise tends to work in quite different art historical spheres, including sculpture, installation, and architecture. Using vibrant colors and patterns and natural and industrial materials, he creates everyday objects and spaces with transformed meanings, such as lamps that function as both lighting and sculpture. As Christina Vegh observed, “Lamps, because of their function, are entirely suited to the forging of connections that is such a leitmotif within his oeuvre. (...) The key to Pardo’s objects is atmospheric lightness, sweeping arabesques and ornaments, along with the domestic and private aspects - elements that the French painter (Matisse) addressed throughout his lifetime. If one artist was interested in using colour effects to make light an effect or a subject for painting, the other (Pardo) takes the liberty of distributing actual light sources around the gallery and thus putting painterly questions on the agenda. (...) But Pardo is not concerned with pure light and pure colour in space, like Dan Flavin or James Turrell. And nor is he interested in wall-to-wall illumination. He is concerned with the various different lamp forms as elements that can create a composition within a particular spatial order and yet still recall everyday personal use, revealing their social dimension.”

Founded by Brian Butler in 1992, 1301PE is a contemporary art gallery exhibiting significant Los Angeles based artists as well as internationally established and acclaimed artists. The gallery is known for its exhibition of significant work across mediums. Founded on the principle of promoting Los Angeles artists worldwide, the gallery has been located at its current location in Miracle Mile, Los Angeles since 1998.

A respected voice in contemporary art discourse.
Focusing on ambitious storytelling and insightful art-world commentary. Ocula Magazine publishes in-depth interviews, critical essays and timely analysis on the artists, exhibitions and ideas driving the global art world.
Learn more about Ocula Magazine
Showcasing the best of the art world.
Ocula partners with galleries from around the world to highlight their artists, artworks and exhibitions. Gallery membership is by application and invitation, with each member vetted by an independent panel.
Learn more about Ocula Membership
Specialises in the sale of major artworks.
Led by a team with deep ties to the world’s leading auction houses, galleries and collectors. Ocula’s advisory team offers bespoke services to high-net-worth clients from around the world who are looking to acquire the best of contemporary and modern art.
Learn more about our team and services