This exhibition, composed of three installations, presents three of the most frequent thematic concerns of the work of José Morales: memory (We Loved You So Much), the city and violence (The Wall), and the work of the creative professional understood in the broadest terms (Arte-sano). Although this exhibition in the Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico is not a retrospective, we might consider it a synthesis of the creative work done by the artist over a career spanning more than forty years. Morales’ work has characteristically presented a changing scene in which a series of elements come together with some frequency. Chairs, hats, machetes, nets and networks, firearms, cages, fruits, vegetables, illustrated scenes are some of the many objects that appear and disappear in the artist's artistic universe. These elements, combined in many ways, constitute what we might call an free, open alphabet of meanings. Each of the works has a direct effect on each viewer’s sensibility, though there may be no clear or univocal interpretation of its meaning. The intricate, complex, vast interrelation of symbols in the vocabulary of José Morales can be summed up in a phrase coined by artist and writer Antonio Martorell in referring to Morales’ work: It is an Affective Alphabet.
Juan Carlos López Quintero
Curator, MAPR