DALLAS, TX.- Erin Cluley Gallery announced the Dallas Museum of Art’s recent acquisition of Chapel, a large scale painting installation by Francisco Moreno. The Chapel was initially shown at Erin Cluley Gallery in Moreno’s solo exhibition, The Chapel and Accompanying Works, in April – May 2018.
The Chapel engages the past while making a new mark, using an iconic structure as the foundation for Moreno’s large-scale painting project. Inside Chapel, imagery is painted from a collapsed archive that draws on a range of works significant to the history and practice of painting, sculpture, architecture and other cultural producers. The imagery is painted in a collage-type manner, integrating processes that cross cultural borders and recognize Moreno’s transnational heritage as a Mexican born American citizen. Influenced by ideas of the Baroque aesthetics, Chapel creates an experience of temporality marked by the themes of novelty, variety, and multiplicity.
“Moreno’s Chapel is indicative of the goals of the DMA’s collection and programming plans: to promote innovative contemporary art that engages with the past, where it can be seen in the context of our rich encyclopedic collection,” says Anna Katherine Brodbeck, the Hoffman Family Senior Curator of Contemporary Art. ”Indeed, many touchstones for Moreno’s immersive and singular vision— Baroque, Meso-American and modern art—can be seen throughout the Museum. We are so proud to include this ambitious installation by a Dallas-based artist in our collection and look forward to putting it on view to be enjoyed by our audiences in the near future.”
Chapel is Moreno's second large-scale painting installation. In 2015, his WCD Project was curated into the Dallas Symphony's first annual Soluna Festival. The large-scale painting and car performance installation debuted alongside internationally known artists including Pipilotti Riist and Alex Prager.
The acquisition of Chapel was made possible through funding from the TWO x TWO for AIDS and Art Fund, the Charron and Peter Denker Contemporary Texas Art Fund, Elisabeth Karpidas, Charles Dee Mitchell, Tammy Cotton Hartnett, Travis Vandergriff, Joyce Goss, Harper and Jim Kennington, and Karen and John Reoch.
Francisco Moreno was born in Mexico City in 1986, ultimately moving to Arlington, Texas in 1992. In 2006, he attended the Conceptual Design Summer Program at the Tecnológico de Monterrey, Querétaro Campus in Mexico. Moreno returned to Arlington to complete his Bachelors in Fine Art at the University of Texas at Arlington in 2010 where he received the James S. Barnett Jr. Ideas in Art Charitable Foundation Scholarship. In 2012, he graduated with a Masters in Fine Art from the Rhode Island School of Design with the prestigious Presidential Scholar Tuition award. Moreno’s work has been exhibited in New York City, New York; Providence, Rhode Island; Stowe, Vermont; Concord, Massachusetts; Dallas, Texas; and San Juan, Puerto Rico.
