The Brownsville Museum of Fine Art invites the Rio Grande Valley community to attend its newest exhibit “Engaged with Space” by artist Alejandro Coronado. The exhibit showcases 20 sculptures and installation work that are inspired by the space and its shape around people.
The exhibit opened last week and will be on display until July 3, during regular museum hours. Coronado said this exhibit composes more than 15 years of work and said the sculpture pieces come from the thoughts he has about space including the shape of the space between his feet, body shapes, the space between the piano legs and even the space between the branches and the trees.
“Over the years, I’ve always thought about how the space, and spaces, flow around people, flow around objects. And what that space is creating and how it looks. Whether it is pleasing to the eye or not, so I’m constantly looking. This exhibit is accumulation of years of work and I’m still looking,” he said.
Coronado said although he also enjoys doing paintings every now and then, to him it is all about the hard work that goes behind creating sculptures. He said he started sculpting back in 1995 when he has working for a private business and he discovered how working on stone is very stress-relieving.
“I have to physically get into it and feel like I’ve put something of myself into it: blood, sweat and tears, right? That’s what I got to do for my work. If I don’t feel that, I’m not there,” Coronado said.
The artist said exhibits like this one are a great opportunity for young kids to see something in the art that adults and older kids don’t see yet. He said art is very important for children so that they can develop their imagination even more and think about the shapes of the sculptures and what the artists are trying to portray.
Coronado said he started drawing as a kid and never stopped.
“Young kids see something in the art work that older kids don’t see yet. They have that imagination. Even I say ‘What’s that to you?’ and they say what I was thinking,” he said.
“Just never stop drawing, because I started drawing. Drawing, playing, playing with clay. It doesn’t have to end. At one point, I was trying to become an engineering major, a mechanical engineering and came back to the art. I got my bachelor’s and my master’s in studio art and now I’m a director. Do what you love and the money will follow.”
Coronado, an art director at a school, said he is hopeful for the future of the arts in the RGV and hopes more young artists grow to be sculptors so that he can see more competition.
“I would like to encourage everyone to get into this. Stone work is very hard on the body, I’ve talked to other artists who said to me ‘I did it for 30 minutes and I’m never doing it again.’ I’ve been doing this for years. I go eight to 9 hours of straight work. I just enjoy it,” he said.
Deyanira Ramirez, executive director at the Brownsville Museum of Fine Art, said the museum decided to exhibit Coronado’s work because it is very different to what has been showcased at the museum before.
“This exhibit is about sculptures and there’s also some installation on the walls. This is different to other exhibits that we have done so we decided to give the artist the opportunity to exhibit at the museum so that we could also have something new and different to offer the community,” she said.
