Jorge Pardo is dedicated to creating installations that pose the question of "where does the work end and real life begin." In a 2008 exhibition titled "House"at the Museum of Contemproary Art in Miami and previously at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Cleveland, he created seven living spaces designated with names such as 'bedroom', kitchen and living room. The idea was to give a sense of merging life and art and to remove a boundaries between real existence and museum isolation of 'fine art' objects. With large-scale photo murals, styrofoam props , silkscreens, and hand-made furniture appearing objects, this exhibition was described as a "walk in sculpture." (Ratcliff)

Pardo was born in Havana, Cuba, 1963 and moved to the United States as a young child. He received his BFA at the Art Center College of Design, Pasadena, CA and studied at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He currently lives and works in Los Angeles.

Throughout his career, Pardo has mixed work devised for traditional museum spaces with artistic pursuits sited in other venues. In 1997, Pardo mounted a rotating exhibition of works selected from the permanent collection of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. This followed a substantial commission to create a cafe for the Leipzig Messe in Germany in 1996. At the Fabric Workshop and Museum in Philadelphia, Pardo renovated the reception spaces. The Berlin Parliament has recently commissioned a large project from Pardo to be realized in 2001.

Pardo's Sculpture Project Munster, 1997 can serve as a "sculpture in its own right and as an allusion to the tradition over many years of observing the locality of the exhibition." His own house, 4166 Sea View Lane, which he presented in 1998 in the context of a solo exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, served as an annex. All at once the house served as a private dwelling, an exhibition venue and an exhibit. "Pardo is interested in the institutional problems connected with this, and also in fundamentally investigating the characteristics of exhibition situations."

"Project," at Dia, Pardo's first major presentation in a New York museum and his most complex and multi-faceted commission to date includes the bookstore and lobby as a long-term installation, and the gallery space will return to its original appearance after two years.

Sources:

http://www.diacenter.org/dia/press/pardo.html

Carter Ratcliff, "House Proud", Art in America, November 2008, pp. 174-179

Yilmaz Dziewior, "Art at the Turn of the Millennium"