OMA Acquires Farley Aguilar's 'School'
ORLANDO, Florida — The Orlando Museum of Art has acquired Farley Aguilar's School (2015), a painting by this year’s recipient of the Florida Prize in Contemporary Art, OMA Director and CEO Glen Gentele announced today.
It was purchased with funds provided by the Charles E. Meiner Acquisition Trust Endowment Fund.
School depicts a group of children arranged for a class picture in front of a one-room school house. Aguilar’s paintings often have a nightmare quality in which the bizarre and the familiar co-mingle in an atmosphere of anxiety and dread. The subject matter of his paintings are old photographs of unidentified figures and situations. “I take every day snap shots from the past and expose the hidden transcendental qualities within the mundane photograph,” Aguilar stated.
Aguilar imagines the many dark secrets and complex interrelations that might exist among the individuals he sees in each photograph and reveals this in his paintings. Underlining much of the work is a suspicion of social organizations, such as schools, which exert pressure on individuals to conform to accepted norms and vilify the outsider.
Aguilar was born in Managua, Nicaragua in 1981 and attended Florida International University, Miami, Florida. His individual exhibitions include Americana, Spinello Projects Gallery, Miami, Florida (2012); The Fates, Spinello Projects Gallery, Miami, Florida (2010); and Ulf, Art and Culture Center of Hollywood, Hollywood, Florida (2010). His recent group exhibitions include Alternative Contemporaneity: Temporary Autonomous Zones, Museum of Contemporary Art - North Miami, Miami Florida (2015); Carnival, Fondation Frances, Paris, France (2013); Course Discourse, Richman Gallery, Baltimore, Maryland (2012); Jammed, General Practice, Miami, Florida (2011); Bitches Brew, Gallery Poulsen Contemporary Arts, Copenhagen, Denmark (2011); Abracadabra, Art and Culture Center of Hollywood, Hollywood, Florida (2010); and Friends of Friends, Garfo Art Center, Salt Lake City, Utah (2010).
His work has been featured through Spinello Projects Gallery at VOLTA, New York, New York (2014); VOLTA, Basel, Switzerland (2014); Art Los Angeles Contemporary, Los Angeles, California (2013); SCOPE Art Fair, New York, New York (2012); SCOPE Art Fair, Trisection, Miami, Florida (2011) and SCOPE Art Fair, Basel, Switzerland (2011). His work is included in private collections, including the Susan and Michael Hort Collection, New York; Gail and Stanley Hollander Collection, Los Angeles; Brown University Art Collection, Providence, Rhode Island; Cricket Taplin Collection, Miami; Paul and Estelle Berg, Miami; and Beth Rudin DeWoody, New York. Aguilar currently lives and works in Miami, Florida and is represented by Spinello Projects, Miami.
Credit Line:
Farley Aguilar
School, 2015
Oil on linen
65 1/2 x 95 inches
The Charles E. Meiner Acquisition Trust Endowment Fund Purchase 2015
© 2015 Farley Aguilar
Photo by Raymond Martinot