Press Pack - Raul Vincent Enriquez

Press Pack
Raul V incent Enriquez: 131 Boerum St. 1A Brooklyn, NY 11206 • www.RaulVincentEnriquez.com • 347 439 0658

“Enriquez gave the show its overall identity... “
– Art in America
“Unlike all the other faces in the advertising-saturated
sky above midtown Manhattan, the ones in Raul
Vincent Enriquez’s latest art installation, aren’t trying
to sell anything. The only concept Enriquez says he is
trying to convey with his new piece “I In The Sky” is the
importance of eye Contact.”
“Perfect 10 “
– The New York Daily News
– ABC NEWS
“In Times Square, the artist Raul Vincent
Enriquez is using the intamacy of the
photo booth to make very public art. “
– The New York Times
“Flaunt Your Mug Above Times Square”
– New York Post
“Enriquez adds a bit of human warmth
to the Manhattan skyline.”
– WIRED
Raul V incent Enriquez: 131 Boerum St. 1A Brooklyn, NY 11206 • www.RaulVincentEnriquez.com • 347 439 0658

Artist Statement
I work to create moments in which something real, true,
and often uncomfortable (but at its base, beautiful)
breaks the bonds of expectation, habit, or social
convention. My work is saturated with emotional
vulnerability, but as frank as possible. Somewhere
between hospitality and frugality, between invitation
and challenge, I create a space where my audience can
truly experience – and digest – an artwork.
Using live culinary arts, video projections, sound,
animation, and photography, I offer my guests radical
and overwhelming hospitality. Burritos, a humble
staple of Chicano cuisine, are the offerings I cook and
serve while mixing my projections; I have refined my
recipe into a mouthwatering paragon of custom-made
beans, fresh lime, cilantro, cotija cheese, and tangy
homemade salsa verde. My animated “wiggly” portraits
create unnervingly candid moments of extreme eye
contact between subject and viewer, while the live food
performance shakes up visitors’ expectations of “service.”
Altogether, the viewer simultaneously encounters the
comfort of delicious food and the strange beauty of
these portraits, faces imbued with florid colors and odd
postures, yet oddly peaceful and genuine. The dischord
of these stimuli produces a new and unique chord,
a kind of harmony between the conceptual and the
pedestrian, the uncanny and the delicious.
“Hand-Signed and Numbered Limited Edition
Extra Cheese Coupon (HS&NLEECC)”
New Museum, Counter Culture, New York
“I In The Sky” A Public Art Project
Conde Nast Building, Times Square, New York
Participants are subjects, collaborators, audience. I
try to make the experience of a live event into
a performance of gifting and barter, a play of
provocation, seduction, hospitality, manners, supply
and demand. I create an environment that provokes
participants’ responses— my desire is to create a
unique bond with an audience of mostly strangers, a
bond that will last long after the performance is over.
Impressive hospitality can be seen as a sign of status.
I see the event of hospitality as a unique nexus where
human behavioral codes cross power lines, sparking
explosions of genuine, unscripted experience.
Raul V incent Enriquez: 131 Boerum St. 1A Brooklyn, NY 11206 • www.RaulVincentEnriquez.com • 347 439 0658

S e l e c t e d G a l l e r y & M u S e u M S h o w S
I in the Sky
A public art project, Times Square/Chashama, New York
Commissioned solo interactive public art project projected for three
months on the Condé Nast building’s Jumbotron screen in Times Square
Audio, Map and Icon Counter Culture, New
Counter Culture, New Museum, New York
Created site-specific installation in a curated group show
...and Religion
Conduit Gallery, Dallas, TX
Photo-Animation Installation
Sesos, APORIA:APORIA
Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE), Los Angeles
Created original sound piece and performance in a curated group show
A Burrito Truck
CUNY Graduate Center, New York City
Created original piece and performance in a curated group show, and two
panel discussions.
Hair In My Food
Scope Art Fair New York, New York
Featured photo-animation short-film
Spelling Rites/Writing Spells
Performance Studies International #11, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island
Lectured and screened new work
a w a r d S
Electronic Media Artist Grant Recipient Experimental Television Center, NY
National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (NARAS) Scholarship
e d u c a t i o n
History
BFA, Music Synthesis and Composition, CSU Dominguez Hills, Los Angeles, CA
Raul V incent Enriquez: 131 Boerum St. 1A Brooklyn, NY 11206 • www.RaulVincentEnriquez.com • 347 439 0658

Raul Vincent Enriquez works in various media, including
photography, animation, live performance, moving
image, beans, and sound. He has a history of hosting
events, such as the Bean and Cheese Burrito Party and
the ongoing Salon Desayuno Robusto, which foster
mastication among audience members. Enriquez’s
work is geared toward revitalizing social relations and
interactions in many different contexts. His animated
“wiggly” portraits create unnervingly candid moments
of extreme eye contact between subject and viewer;
his live food performances re-energize the flaccid massmarket
food service dynamic by shaking up visitors’
expectations of “service.”
As a performer, Enriquez displays a kind of radical
hospitality, which invites enthusiastic and frank
participation by the audience. In recent years, he has
showed work at the New Museum (NYC), Queens Museum
(NYC), Scope (NYC/London/Miami), EFA Galleries (NYC),
Conduit Gallery (Dallas), Los Angeles Contemporary
Exhibitions, Performance Studies International (NYC), New York Theatre Workshop, NYU
Performance Studies Program, and Cal Arts (LA),
among others.
“Andrew Dasburg’s Lucifer”
dBfoundation Fountation Disarmory Show , New York
Bio
Photo Booth Portrait from “I In The Sky”
Times Square, New York
In 2002, Enriquez was an Electronic Media
Artist Grant Recipient from the Experimental
Television Center, NY. In 2008/09 he will create
a traveling Media & Burrito Truck, a mobile live
food-performance radical hospitality unit.
As a sound designer, he designed all of Reza
Abdoh’s U.S. and European Dar A Luz theatre
productions and playwright/director Juliana
Francis’ GO GO GO and SAINT LATRICE. Recently
Raul designed sound on MAJOR BANG for the
Foundry Theatre and on THE DIVINE COMEDY
OF AN EXQUISITE CORPSE for Julie Atlas Muz.
Raul V incent Enriquez: 131 Boerum St. 1A Brooklyn, NY 11206 • www.RaulVincentEnriquez.com • 347 439 0658