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Artist Bio
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bronze

Semiprecious

September 29, 2004 - August 31, 2005

MetroTech Center, Brooklyn

Public Art Fund is proud to present a new exhibition of contemporary art at MetroTech Center. Semiprecious features works by Carolyn Castaño, Jennifer Cohen, Luis Gispert, Kirsten Hassenfeld, and Marc Swanson, each of whom use visually dazzling materials to explore themes of artifice, seduction, desire, exoticism, and fantasy. With a critical eye toward the precious object, these artists explore the elements of melancholy, romance, and sensuality that lie beneath the sparkling surface.

Luis Gispert's work for MetroTech Center is a sculpture of three boom boxes that doubles as a bench. Made in bronze and buffed to a gleaming sheen, Laid Back in the Cut is a quasi-functional monument to nearby Fulton Street Mall, downtown Brooklyn's busy shopping district. An urban center for decades, Fulton Street Mall is mentioned in the lyrics of several hip-hop songs. The boom box, or ghetto blaster, played an integral part in the history of hip hop and rap, transforming the musical forms into mainstream genres with mass appeal. The portable sound system was, as Gispert puts it, "a contemporary campfire for urbanites to gather around and express themselves through their versions of storytelling (rap) and dancing (breaking)."

Artist Bio
Luis Gispert lives and works in Brooklyn. He has formulated a seductive urban aesthetic, creating sculptures that incorporate objects identified with hip-hop culture--turntables, chrome tire rims, gold jewelry, rhinestones, fake fur, and boom boxes--into semi-usable furniture designs. He received an MFA from Yale University, and has recently had solo exhibitions at the Whitney Museum of American Art at Altrea in New York and the Berkeley Art Museum in California.

Sponsorship
Semiprecious at MetroTech Center is part of an ongoing program organized by the Public Art Fund and sponsored by MetroTech Commons Associates, an organization that consists of MetroTech companies Bear Stearns & Company, Forest City Ratner Companies, JPMorganChase, KeySpan, and Polytechnic University. Special thanks to Forest City Ratner Companies and First New York Management.

Location
MetroTech Center is located in Downtown Brooklyn between Jay Street and Flatbush Avenue at Myrtle Avenue. Viewing hours are dawn to dusk daily for outdoor works, Monday through Friday 8am to 6pm for Carolyn Castaño's Nightbird in One MetroTech. Subway: A, C, F to Jay Street/Borough Hall, exit at Myrtle Promenade; R to Lawrence Street.