Detail of Fear and Denial by Osorio in the Brooklyn Museum, August 2007

Pepon Osorio (Puerto Rican, born 1955)
"Fear and Denial," 1997
Mixed Media

Accession # 2003.5

Pepon Osorio is one of the foremost installation artists working today. His art, whose primary subject is life in the barrio, is particularly concerned with social issues involving Latino communities. The artist often combines multi-media technology with an abundance of surface decoration to construct elaborate environments. Here, he presents two giant stuffed cats bearing medallions reading, respectively, "fear" and "denial." The proportions of the piece are rather ambiguous: the cats seem to be too large for the narrow table on which they sit. This incongruity reflects the artist's recollections of visiting his mother's apartment, filled with knickknacks and figurines, when he was an art student. The objects were in sharp contrast with the aesthetic values of the art world he was entering, and his conflicting feelings of repulsion and attraction assumed giant dimensions in his mind. In this piece, he comments years later on the often-exaggerated proportions of our fears and denials.

Text from the Brooklyn Museum label.