Virgil Ortiz: Revolt 1680/2180

exhibition catalogue for the Denver Art Museum

From the Introduction by Peter Held:
How does Virgil Ortiz’s artistic oeuvre fit into the continuum of contemporary ceramics? Every artist creates his or her work from a self-referential perspective; in the case of Ortiz, that starting point harbors a duality in which his cultural identity as Cochiti intertwines with his experience as world citizen. His mining of historical and cultural sources, endowed with postmodern punk and science-fiction sensibilities, has formed a compelling body of powerful, beautiful work. His vision is molded outside his facile skill and technique, not trumping his conceptual underpinnings. Ortiz’s ability to animate space comes from a convergence of ancestral values with contemporary thought that enables the artist to communicate the complexity of contemporary existence while providing a foundation of Native American perspectives, which empowers younger generations..... For the last decade Ortiz has worked in serial fashion, producing novellas in a continuing story that reinterprets the events and legacy of the Pueblo Revolt of 1680 and projects them well into the future.

80 pages
7.75 x 9 inches
2015